[MadameConcorde]

Hello geeks,

I am not sure what happened. This came accidentally without my asking while making some changes in a document.
My operating system is XP Pro SP 2 (or SP3 not sure).


I may have hit a key accidentally. I don't know. Anyway I am in a big mess now as I do not have a duplicate of this document saved anywhere.

This has never happened to me before.

I had a MS Word 2000 document that has transformed into a strange coded language - blocks, question marks, and all sorts of other 'cryptic' marks. It appeared under a different name than the original document name. Doing a search for the original document every possible way I could not find the original document in European script/numbers anymore.

Trying to extract mswrd632 converter from the original software CD in my CD drive did not help at all.

The new coded document that appeared seems to have the same number of pages as the original document so maybe there is still hope to recoop the original re-coding it in the original form.

What I have now is a document like this that also has lots of squares/blocks that somehow won't paste here:
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I may have hit a key accidentally. I don't know. Anyway I am in a big mess now as I do not have a duplicate of this document saved anywhere.

Now comes my question:

Is there a way to turn this back into a normal readable MS word document so I can get it back as it was before?
There is some important data in this document and I have no backup file.

I am not an English native speaker so I hope of all this makes sense.

Thank you very much in advance for any help you can provide. I will be greatly appreciated if someone can help me retrieve the original document by turning this mess back to normal.

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Hi MadameConcorde,

Let's first run a basic test to see if it is a text encoding error. Right click on the file in question, copy it and paste it in some other folder.
Now select the new copied file and follow these instructions ( I am assuming you have microsoft office 2007) --> http://www.ehow.com/...-word-2007.html

At the very last step, do the encoded text and if it doesn't work select "unicode" and try to see if it works.
Tips:-
To find the "Confirm file format conversion on open" , in the advanced tab scroll down to the general category and the third option should be the one you want.

[GKW]

Hi MadameConcorde,

Let's first run a basic test to see if it is a text encoding error. Right click on the file in question, copy it and paste it in some other folder.
Now select the new copied file and follow these instructions ( I am assuming you have microsoft office 2007) --> http://www.ehow.com/...-word-2007.html

At the very last step, do the encoded text and if it doesn't work select "unicode" and try to see if it works.
Tips:-
To find the "Confirm file format conversion on open" , in the advanced tab scroll down to the general category and the third option should be the one you want.

[MadameConcorde]

Hello and thank you for your answer. I have been away and off the computer a lot. Will you please pardon my late reply.

I finally debugged the text and got it back to normal by following this procedure. Sorry the text is in French but I am sure you will get an idea of how it works... and it worked perfectly well. Got my text all back to normal... and quite happy about it!!!

I saved this procedure in case it happens again.




Etape 1 : Dans une fenêtre Windows cliquer sur 'Outils' ; 'Options des dossiers' ; Onglet 'Affichage' ; 'Afficher les fichiers et dossiers cachés' (9eme puce à partir du haut). Cela permet de "voir" les dossiers système cachés (droits administrateur indispensables).

Etape 2 : Sous Winword faire 'Outils' ; 'Options' ; Onglet 'Dossier par défaut' ; sélectionner la ligne 'Récupération automatique de fichiers' ; cliquer sur 'Modifier' : Indique le chemin des fichiers temporaires Word. Prendre note de ce répertoire (exemple : C:\Documents and Settings\XXXXX\Application Data\Microsoft\Word)

Etape 3 : Se rendre dans le répertoire indiquer à l'étape 2 et copier l'ensemble des fichiers *.tmp et *.* à la date du jour (celle où vous avez perdu le ou les fichiers) dans un répertoire personnel (exemple : c:\toto). Ce sont les documents temporaires correspondant à ceux que vous avez "perdu".

Etape 4 : Modifier les extensions .tmp et autre .??? en .doc afin de pouvoir les ré-ouvrir avec Winword.

[Elliot]

Hello MadameConcorde!

I have removed your OTL log. Should it be determined that you need to seek malware removal assistance, you will want to post your log in that forum.

Thanks, and good luck with your issue,

Elster