I have a word doc saved on my employer's network drive. I transferred that doc to a thumbdrive so I can continue composing the document at home.

I plugged the thumbdrive on to my home computer but I cant open the word document without asking me to choose from a list of formats ie; text-only, encoded text, word, etc. I tried every format. The thing I observed is when I try to open the doc and the list of formats pops up, 'encoded text' is high lighted. As if it's the default format? When I clicked it, it opens but all I see are bunch of small squares. Anyone have an idea what's happened to my word file and how to fix ? thanks.

Try copying the file to your hard disk and then see if you can open it. If you can't, then try opening it using the Open and Repair option.

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Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional