Word Docs have become Unix Executable Files!

The subject says it. This has happened on both my wife's iMac G5, and my MacBook Pro. Some, not all, of our Word docs, (both using 2004, running OS X.4.7) have had their icons turned into a gray console, and in "Get Info" identify themselves as "Unix Executable File." When opened in Word, I get the option to open as if it were a foreign file, and typically, it opens with all formatting gone, and all kinds of bizarre characters at the beginning (and sometimes end) of the doc.
Now, I can salvage the data, it seems, but is there some way to simply undo this damage without manually going through every file?
I must say, this is exactly the kind of junk that I would expect to find on a PC. This is a stunningly bad problem, by far the worst I've experienced in almost 15 years of using Macs. I would assume that Apple is aware of this, and that they can:
1) Explain what happened.
2) Explain a quick and easy fix.
Thanks to anyone (from Apple or otherwise) who can do 1 and 2 above.

Jeffois,
The first command I gave to you will render the directory in question, and all nested directories, inaccessible. The second command will make the diretories accessible again.
There is a possibility that there are files in this directory structure which are not owned by you. Not likely, but I must make the assumption that these could be encountered when I give such commands "in the dark" as it were. In such a case, you would see an error regarding these files, thus the warning.
You can return your directories to accessibility using the second command, regardless of errors you might encounter. If you do encounter errors, I will post a different form of the same commands that will work.
Be prepared to deal with this problem any time you transfer files from a Windows-formatted volume. This is not a Windows problem, but rather one of differences between the two file systems. If you see a file show up with the executable icon, you might want to remove the execute bit right away. Unfortunately, there is no way to do this in the GUI, so you must resort to using Terminal.
This shouldn't be too much of a problem. Just open Terminal, type this text with a traling space:
<pre style="overflow:auto; font-family: 'Monaco'; font-size: 10px">chmod a-x</pre>
then select all of the new files and drag them all into the Terminal window. This will create a rather long command line that includes the full path to every file you dragged in. Just press <RETURN>, and "POOF," no more execute bit!
Scott

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    Message was edited by: eww
    Message was edited by: eww

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