From your description, that suggests someone selected the entire document and pressed Ctrl-F9 when they were trying to update cross-references and the like, instead of pressing just F9. The result would be an entire document encompassed in { }. Pressing F9 at this point is liable to make all the content disappear. If that happens, pressing Alt-F9 will expose the field contents.

Assuming the above is correct, the solution is to copy & cut everything between the field braces, leaving just the braces behind, deleting the braces, then pasting the cut content back into the document. You cannot simply select & delete the field braces.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]