WD2001: Extra Text and Odd Characters Appear When You Open Document in Word (310081)

SYMPTOMS

After you open a file either by using the Open command in Word or by double-clicking the document icon from the Finder, the document may exhibit the following changes:

Extra text, odd characters, or both may appear.
Inserted graphics do not appear.
Complex formatting is gone.
The file is longer.

CAUSE

This behavior can occur if you use the Recover Text from Any File format to open the file or if a third-party file translator automatically translates the file when you open the file.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this behavior, close the document without saving changes, and then use the appropriate format to open the file again. To do this, follow these steps:

With the document open, click Close on the File menu.
Click Don't Save.
On the File menu, click Open.
In the Show box, click the appropriate document format, and then click Open. Make sure that you do not select the Recover Text from Any File format.

If you saved the file after you opened the file in Word and the odd characters appeared, you need to manually remove the extra text and the odd characters.

MORE INFORMATION

The Recover Text from Any File format converts all information in the document to Text Only. This format is usually used to recover text from a damaged document.

If the document continues to show odd behavior after you follow the steps in the Resolution section of this article, the file may be damaged and you may need to troubleshoot the document. For additional information about troubleshooting the damaged document, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

285393 WD2001: How to Troubleshoot Damaged Documents in Word