WD2000: Saving Document As Text Replaces Characters with Question Marks (209577)

SYMPTOMS

When you save a document containing text formatted with a symbol type font, for example, Wingdings, in any text format, such as Text Only, MS-DOS Text, Text with Layout, and so on, the characters formatted in the symbol font are converted to question marks.

For example, in a document you type

This is a test.

and then you select the text and format the selection with the Wingdings font. When you save the document as a Text Only document, close and reopen the text document, the following appears in place of the original text:

??????????????

CAUSE

This behavior is by design. Because text-only documents cannot contain character-formatting information, saving the characters codes to text-only and then reopening the document may result in unpredictable formatting.

For example, if you format a document using the Wingdings font and then press the key combination SHIFT+J to produce the smiley-face character, saving the document as text-only and then reopening the document results in the smiley-face character being replaced with the capital J.

Because Word cannot determine the original font used to produce the character you want, a question mark is displayed in its place.

WORKAROUND

To work around this behavior, you can use Windows WordPad to save the Word document as a text-only document. WordPad directly converts to the underlying character codes, disregarding any document-specific font formatting:

Save the document as a Word document.
Close the document.
Open the Windows WordPad application (default location is in the Accessories group under Programs on the Windows Start menu.)
Open the Word document in WordPad.
Save the document as a Text Document (on the File menu, click Save, and click Text Document in the Save as type list).