Maybe the sender is using a non-standard keyboard? Might help if you could post an image of what you're seeing.

First thing to assume is that the doc header is corrupted.

Second is to see if it's salvageable. Assuming the doc is on neutral territory like the desktop and not just in the email client, right click on it and choose (if it's offered to you) "open with", and step through the choices you then get.

Sometimes this is a worthless exercise but sometimes it works very well.

Try opening it in Wordpad. Notepad cannot recognise .doc files.

You should find Wordpad by clicking Start/All programs/Accessories/Wordpad.

A lot of misdirection going on.

Owbist is right. The doc suffix suggests it's in Microsoft Word format. Wordpad should open it. If you don't have MS Word, consider downloading free Apache Open Office (formerly just called Open Office), it's a compatible and very useful suite with word processing, spreadsheet. presentation, etc. components to mirror MS Office.

Many programs use little-used ASCII characters as shorthand symbols for formatting and other data that accompanies the main body of a file.

Thanks for all your suggestions. I was able to get the attachment into Word Pad, but that didn't help. The symbols were different, but still undecipherable. I'll get a hard copy tomorrow from the sender.

Lou

Google Drive (formerly called Google Docs) will open Word files too. Also free.

I don't know what I did, or how I did it, but this morning when I turned on my computer, a Word document was on my desktop that turned out to be the one I wanted in readable and printable form.

Thanks again for all your suggestions. One of them worked!

No disrespect intended...but if you can't share with others what worked...what you did and how...then it seems to be pretty much a wasted effort. Here's hoping you can provide better info next time you have a question.

Azinoh:

I can understand your wanting to know what worked. Problem is, I don't know. I tried all the suggestions given and a few more besides, and none seemed to have worked. When I closed my computer last evening the problem did not seem to be solved and I was getting a hard copy from the sender.

This morning when I turned on the computer there was a Word icon on the desktop I hadn't seen before. I clicked it, and it opened to the document I wanted in a readable form. I'm not sure which of the things I tried put it there and if I have that problem again I may have to have trial and error to solve it again.

Lou

"I tried all the suggestions given and a few more besides, and none seemed to have worked"

Google drive didn't work?

Snidely - Your response arrived after I discovered the document on my desktop so I did not download it and try it. However, I'll be downloading it in case this happens again since I get these minutes each month.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Lou