Can't read word documents

Question

When I open documents with Word 2010 they appear in some odd script of letters, numbers and symbols.

Answer 1

Hi,
Does this issue happen on all Word documents or just some of them? If just some, where do you get these documents?
This issue may occur if Word haven't accurately detected the encoding standard of text in the file.
To fix the issue, we can specify the encoding standard to use to display (decode) the text:
1. Click the File tab > Options > Advanced.
2. Scroll to the General section, and then select the
Confirm file format conversion on open check box.
3. Close and then reopen the file.
4. In the Convert File dialog box, select
Encoded Text.
5. In the File Conversion dialog box, select
Other encoding, and then select the encoding standard that you want from the list. You may need to look up the encoding standards that are available in Word in the following article. See the "Look up encoding standards that
are available in Word" section.
https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Choose-text-encoding-when-you-open-and-save-files-60d59c21-88b5-4006-831c-d536d42fd861
Please let me know the result.
Regards,
Steve Fan
TechNet Community Support
It's recommended to download and install
Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT), which is developed by Microsoft Support teams. Once the tool is installed, you can run it at any time to scan for hundreds of known issues in Office
programs.