The company I work for uses a word document for contracts with suppliers. The word file has an embeded excel ( inserted as an object rather than link to source ). The excel contains charges/rates. It uses ActiveX controls to perform some basic functions such as inserting rows, hiding columns and moving between tabs. It also has a number of formulas and name ranges used in data validation lists/drop downs. Not sure this excel bit is relevant to the problem but wanted to give all the facts just in case.



I created the word doc and excel file in 2007.

Some users have reported a problem whereby the word document is converting some text (not all) as well as both the header and footer (footer has page numbering) into some nonsense characters . I'm struggling to find the cause despite hours of trawling through forums, so thought I'd join here to see if anyone has come across this before?

The trouble is our company has many employees using a number of different versions of office; from 2007 to 2013 on different OS inc XP and Windows 7. The contracts are usually emailed ( outlook ) and problems so far seem to have been in word 2010. Could office versions be the issue, and if so; any known work arounds ?

A possible source of problems is working with flash drives. If the documents are opened/saved/printed on flash drives from within Word it can cause document corruption. I do not know that this is what is happening to you, though.

The users reporting problems may have Word's field code display toggled on. Pressing Alt-F9 toggles it on/off.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Thanks both . Don't use flash drives so can rule that one out. Tried to toggle on/off but doesn't seem to fix this problem :-( it's becoming a pain in the neck as quite a few users are experiencing this now. Interestingly the users experiencing this seem to be using word 2010. These documents go through quite a few people though so could have been edited in an earlier version of word before being emailed. It seems the doc opens fine but as soon as they do anything I.e. Open the embeded excel headers and footers go to gibberish.

Can I suggest attaching a zip file with both a gibberish and non-gibberish version. Someone here may be able to sort it out. To attach a file, click on the Go Advanced button and click on the paper clip icon.