Formatting lost, symbols appear when you open document

When you open a document in Microsoft Word, no formatting is displayed, and square boxes and symbols may be interspersed throughout the document. Also, you may see text that describes the formatting that was stripped out. This text appears at the beginning and end of the document.

This behavior can occur when the Files of type setting is Recover Text from Any File, so that when you open your document, only the text is recovered, not any of its formatting.

To see the Files of type setting, click Open on the File menu.

To prevent only text from being recovered when you open your files, and to open your documents in the format of Word documents, follow these steps:

1. On the File menu, click Open.
2. In the Files of type list, click Word Documents, or click All Files.

The Recover Text from Any File setting will remain until you change it back either to Word Documents or All Files.

For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: