word has squares instead of text

Copper Contributor

Hello, i was using office 365 proplus, and suddenly the text changed into squares. Its a big file, over 200 pages, made by me. How can i get it back?

Greetings

3 Replies

Hi,

I'd first check if the fonts are OK. 
Win+R, fonts + OK > you get a list of installed fonts. No squares there?

Close the Word file you have problems with, open it with Ctrl+O (File, Open) - and choose the repair option

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Open-a-document-after-a-file-corruption-error-47df9d48-2165...

Kind regards

Hans

If the article cited by Hans doesn't fix the problem, you can try the macro shown in the article at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/290978/wd2002-symbol-characters-are-changed-to-box-characte.... It's very old but should still be applicable to Word in Office 365. However, there's no guarantee that the cause is the same or that the macro will fix it, so work only on a copy of the original document.
This was exactly what I needed! Thank you.