How do I remove squares and characters mixed in with text?

[Songbird]

I opened an old Word document and discovered that a major portion of the text
was not readable because the original text was mixed with squares next to
every letter and other characters mixed in as well. The rest of the document
is fine. How do I fix this?

 

[JoAnn Paules]

I've seen that happen with some fonts when I have non-printing characters
showing.

 

[Gordon Bentley-Mix at news.microsoft.com]

You might also have some success using 'Open and Repair'. Click File |
Open..., navigate to and select the document, and then click the little arrow
on the 'Open' button and choose 'Open and Repair'.
--
Cheers!

Gordon Bentley-Mix
Word MVP

Please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup.

Read the original version of this post in the Office Discussion Groups - no
membership required!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

That would be my guess, too. As noted in
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm, some of the clone
fonts supplied with older versions of CorelDRAW used large boxes for the
space characters, making text impossible to read with NPC displayed.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

I've seen that happen with some fonts when I have non-printing characters
showing.

--

JoAnn Paules
MVP Microsoft [Publisher]
Tech Editor for "Microsoft Publisher 2007 For Dummies"

I opened an old Word document and discovered that a major portion of the
text
was not readable because the original text was mixed with squares next to
every letter and other characters mixed in as well. The rest of the
document
is fine. How do I fix this?