Cancelled Document Conversion Process

[Jeremy]

A friend of mine said some girl at his university (who knows nothing about computers) was working on a 1500 word essay and went to save it. She was asked about some conversion, clicked cancel, closed Word, re-opened her file and suddenly 95% of it was converted to those square box characters.

Here's a screenshot of exactly what it looks like: Clicky

The data seems to still be in the document, just in some strange format. Does anyone know of an undo method, or is this file FUBAR?

Thanks guys/girls,

Jeremy

[skyhack]

First, I'd see if she has an autosave of the document. Look for a filename in the "~wrdxxxx.tmp" name format in "C:\ Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft". She may find one that's very nearly complete.

You could also try the "Open as" options, and go through each of the formats Word allows, and hope you get the right one.

It also looks like there may be some character set or language issues. Does she use multiple languages or keyboard layouts? If so, the file may open just fine in the correct language/character set option.