Text from old documents when opened are just squares!

[Guest]

I have an old computer which has been hidden away for many years, but I have
dug it out to check old files. The computer runs Win 95 and Word 95
(Version7) (I said it was old!).

The word files were written on that computer, on that version of word yet
now none will open properly, they text just show up as a lot of squares
instead.

Any thoughts on what has happened or how it can be sorted? Any help on
solving this, even though it is an old version would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

A Taxed Mind

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi Taxed Mind,

A square is displayed for any character that isn't in the current font, or
for any code that isn't even a proper character.
If it's all squares, that does not bide well.

As a first test, you could open the file, but change the file type in the
"File > Open" dialog to "Recover text from any file".
You loose all formatting, but it might give you at least any text that's in
there.

If that didn't get any usable text, you could select one of the squares.
Then open the VBA editor (Alt+F11).
Go into the Immediate window (Ctrl+G).
There, type
? AscW(Selection.Text)

When you press the Return key at the end of the line, you should get the
code of the selected character.

If it's 0 (zero), and you get the same result for many other selected
characters, there's really nothing to rescue.
Else you might post back with some numbers you got.

Regards,
Klaus