Word documents display in gibberish(unicode?)

[hoorhay]

I ran malwarebytes the other day to clean a couple issues I was having with a laptop. After doing so my word documents no longer open up normally. They display the characters as some strange encoding. Is there anyway to display them in "Not Gibberish"?

The font has been set to various different normal fonts, but still nothing.

Any ideas?

 

[Saberus]

It's remotely possible you were in the middle of a ransomware attack that was encrypting your files. It's also likely that the files or Word itself has been corrupted.

Easiest chase here is to try opening the documents in something other than Word to see if there's readable text (Maybe LibreOffice), or try repairing/reinstalling Word.

 

[hoorhay]

I've put the files on a flash drive and put them into a different computer, tried opening them in word pad and notepad, still encoded.

 

[Joemari Asencio]

Can you try to create a new document. Change font to Arial and type a few words. save it. exit Microsoft Word then try to open the once you have just created.

 

[hoorhay]

The new one opens fine. But when I set font to arial then try to open one of the damaged files it displays as the encoding just the same.

 

[Joemari Asencio]

I think your document file is corrupted cause by the malwarebyte. try to repair the file

To open a specific document by using the Open and Repair feature in Word, follow these steps:
Start Word.
On the File menu, click Open.

In the Open dialog box, click to select the file that you want to open.
Click the down arrow on the Open button, and then click Open and Repair.

 

[hoorhay]

What encoding should I select in file conversion?

 

[Joemari Asencio]

Use the current version of your Word