word has squares instead of text

[krowa1010]

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

[#2]

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

[#3]

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.

[#4]

This was exactly what I needed! Thank you.

[#5]

It's an old post though but I had a co-worker with this problem today.

The macro in the article linked by @Jay Freedman did not work for me in office 365 and Office 2021, maybe because the document contained pictures, text boxes and tables.

I ended up creating my own little tool to fix the issue:

https://github.com/josibu/LakeNiceName/tree/master 

Maybe it helps someone out there.