Microsoft KB Archive/209577

= WD2000: Saving Document As Text Replaces Characters with Question Marks =

Article ID: 209577

Article Last Modified on 12/6/2000

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Word 2000 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q209577



SYMPTOMS
When you save a document containing text formatted with a symbol type font, for example, Wingdings, in any text format, such as Text Only, MS-DOS Text, Text with Layout, and so on, the characters formatted in the symbol font are converted to question marks.

For example, in a document you type

This is a test.

and then you select the text and format the selection with the Wingdings font. When you save the document as a Text Only document, close and reopen the text document, the following appears in place of the original text:

??????????????



CAUSE
This behavior is by design. Because text-only documents cannot contain character-formatting information, saving the characters codes to text-only and then reopening the document may result in unpredictable formatting.

For example, if you format a document using the Wingdings font and then press the key combination SHIFT+J to produce the smiley-face character, saving the document as text-only and then reopening the document results in the smiley-face character being replaced with the capital J.

Because Word cannot determine the original font used to produce the character you want, a question mark is displayed in its place.



WORKAROUND
To work around this behavior, you can use Windows WordPad to save the Word document as a text-only document. WordPad directly converts to the underlying character codes, disregarding any document-specific font formatting:


 * 1) Save the document as a Word document.
 * 2) Close the document.
 * 3) Open the Windows WordPad application (default location is in the Accessories group under Programs on the Windows Start menu.)
 * 4) Open the Word document in WordPad.
 * 5) Save the document as a Text Document (on the File menu, click Save, and click Text Document in the Save as type list).

Keywords: kbnofix kbprb KB209577

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