WordPad 5.1 Problem with Squares

[KittyKibbles]

My boyfriend (the absentminded one) saved about two hundred movi
reviews he had written in Wordpad and now when he accesses the documen
the ONLY thing that comes up are a huge line of squares.

The document was saved as a text document and we have tried severa
ways of reverting it back to readable words but to no avail. Openin
it with another program does not work, saving it as a differen
document type doesn't work and nor does opening that different typ
with a different program work either.

He has Windows XP.
Could anyone please shed any advice as to what we need to do?

Thanks-
Cas

 

[Jeffrey Kaplan]

It is alleged that KittyKibbles claimed:

My boyfriend (the absentminded one) saved about two hundred movie
reviews he had written in Wordpad and now when he accesses the document
the ONLY thing that comes up are a huge line of squares.

This sounds like the data is in binary. This could be because the file
was saved or converted to a binary format, or something massively
corrupted the data.

Is there any recognizable text at the very beginning or end of the
file?

--
Jeffrey Kaplan www.gordol.org
The from userid is killfiled Send personal mail to gordol

"Why does everything with you always have to come down to biology?"
"Because no matter what you do everything comes down to one of two
things: biology or math." "Please, don't start him, we'll be here for
days." (Mr. Garibaldi, Dr. Franklin and Cmdr. Ivanova, B5
"Exogenesis")

 

[KittyKibbles]

Nope, there is no recognizable text just square after square after
square. I'm pretty sure he did not save or convert his file, so I'm
guessing something corrupted it.

 

[Richard in AZ]

What version of WordPad did he use. What program is he using now to read
the files.
Older versions of WordPad do not do well with new version of MS Word.
However, both produced files with a "doc" extension. The if you just try
to open the files directly, and you have MS Word on your computer, the
computer tries to use MS Word to read the file.

Did he try to first open the program WordPad and then open the file?
Can take the files to an older PC with an earlier version of WordPad, and
not MS Word on it?