Word 2011 document changed to all asterisks!

Not quite

I did look very hard--spent untold hours trying to find out what had happened online, AND went to an appointment at the Genius Bar @ the Apple Shop (they said they'd never heard of it). But if you don't know what you are looking for: ie 'asterisks bug' then, very obviously, no, this info wasn't easy to find. Granted I am no techie--did not have the vocabulary to make my searches more productive, but then I doubt I am alone. All I could do was run searches on texts converting themselves into symbols.

However thank you very much for the Scrivener tip--I will def look into that ASAP! Good solution.

+1 on Scrivener

It is now available through the Mac APP Store. Just upgraded to the new version and am using Index Cards (iPad APP) to sync work between the two.

Advice: asterisks bug cont

Hello all, the Genius Bar people suggested I reinstall all the software to prevent this happening again. Does anyone agree? I would rather not if this is deemed pointless. After all, they'd never heard of this before. Thanks.

cbr said:

Hello all, the Genius Bar people suggested I reinstall all the software to prevent this happening again. Does anyone agree? I would rather not if this is deemed pointless. After all, they'd never heard of this before. Thanks.

Click to expand...

From all that I have read there is no certain way to keep it from happening other than to not use MS Word. You can mitigate against catastrophic loss by continually saving different versions (what I tend to do) or use a different software package.
But until Microsoft is able to identify and correct the problem (something I believe they are working on) you will continue to face the dreaded asterisk risk.
Seriously doubt reinstalling everything will fix it . . . and I certainly wouldn't bet several hours/days/weeks of work on it.

Just my opinion.

Whole heartedly agree with Razormac. If you read the link I gave you, you'll learn even the MS experts don't know what's causing it and say the only defense you have is backup. Take a look at the tips they recommend which should help to prevent data loss in the future.

lost my document too

Hi, first time poster. Switched from PC to Mac couple years back. Do lots of writing and creating power points. About 6 months ago, lost an entire manuscript to the asterisk problem. Reflexively hit Save, and could not undo. I was on the plane, and cried for my manuscript. 2-3 months of effort just gone. However, not too time sensitive, and I could re-write. It sucked, but I could. Since then, autosave set at 1 min, and tried to create multiple copies of document to avoid this issue, but get mad that I have to do such a thing.

No issues, until just now. Everything turned to asterisks. My first act was to close without saving, and thankfully document recovered. This time, losing this would have been very bad. This document is due for submission in two days, and there is no way I can re-write. I'd be losing some major grant funding, because I'd not be able to even submit.

I am seriously considering not using Mac Word ever again. I have fallen in love with Macs, but not if it means worrying about losing documents. I also use PCs and would be happy to use Word for PC. The medical academic community uses PCs almost exclusively so no biggie, in fact makes life easier. But still, there's got to be a solution to this.....

I agree - MS needs to fix this. I haven't come across it yet - but I think about it every time I'm saving. I've been working on a paper - (for too long now) - but I've taken to breaking it apart into multiple files based on topic - just to hopefully minimize any damage should I run into this.

I've turned on Word's backup feature because I know that if I don't, this will happen to one of my documents.

I also back up religiously. I have a healthy fear that I'm going to break my laptop some day and I really want my first reaction to be "thankfully I have a backup of all that data."

But still, there's got to be a solution to this.....

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, there is none. MS has shirked its responsibility with this problem and has placed the blame on the Apple operating system. You can read what solutions and preventative measures the MS MVP community has come up with. LINK

My advice has been to not use Word 2011 but rather switch to a more polished professional writing tool such as Scrivener.

That link seems to imply that it's been fixed. I wonder if that's true. If you're in Academia, I'm not sure Scrivener is really an option as I don't think most of the popular citation management tools have a ready interface.

You're right Brian. I had that link saved and hadn't bothered to check it out in awhile. It does appear it was fixed with service pack 2. I'm currently running 14.1.3 which I believe was the last update to Office 2011. Now I'm wondering if the OP has updated his copy of Office 2011. Although if he had auto updates on, he should be using the latest version.

Scrivener is really designed for writers or perhaps someone who is preparing a Phd dissertation. Probably not suitable to use in the business world.

chscag said:

... or perhaps someone who is preparing a Phd dissertation. Probably not suitable to use in the business world.

Click to expand...

One that is void of any math that is... otherwise - I'd love to experiment with it. From a pure writing perspective - it looks really nice.

After 5 Months It Happened to Me

I've been using a legal version of MS Office Home/Student for 5 months on a new MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard. Just last night, following a cut and paste from another docx document that I had been using for a while, my 175-page manuscript turned to asterisks. I quickly did a File Save As [another file name], and when I called up the original it was fine, so I only lost 1/2 hour of work. Thanks to other posts I did turn on the Auto Backup feature, besides the multiple back ups I routinely do to other places (but that's for fire/theft/virus/etc, I never would have dreamed something this bizarre would happen!)

One thing that was different compared to the last 5 months was that I had received an Office 98 file from a PC, edited it with no issue (except to convert the fonts from Times New Roman to Times so that they are visible, as usual) , and saved it on my computer. That file was fine, so I'm not sure if that's a coincidence or the cause.

Word 2011 definitely has font issues, so I agree that this may also be an extreme font issue. When I cut and paste text into my main large document from other sources, I tend to do it into a separate document first, convert it to a Font that won't crash my Word 2011, then paste it into my main document, though now I'm even afraid to do that.

Some have mentioned installing the 14.1.3 update, so I ran my Apple Software Update, and no Office updates were available. When I went to Office directly there was a 14.1.0 update. After that loaded a message said that there were no further updates available. Is 14.1.3 for the Business version, or for Lion users perhaps?

Some have mentioned installing the 14.1.3 update, so I ran my Apple Software Update, and no Office updates were available. When I went to Office directly there was a 14.1.0 update. After that loaded a message said that there were no further updates available. Is 14.1.3 for the Business version, or for Lion users perhaps?

Click to expand...

The latest service pack is #4. The "about Word" should show version 14.1.4.

You may have to run the MS Word update manually rather than rely on the auto update feature. The service packs issued by MS are for all versions of Office not just the student or business versions.

Also, make sure you haven't installed and used "Monolingual" or any other application which removes languages that are not used by you. That will cause the Office auto update application to not update or install the latest updates.

chscag said:

The latest service pack is #4. The "about Word" should show version 14.1.4.

You may have to run the MS Word update manually rather than rely on the auto update feature. The service packs issued by MS are for all versions of Office not just the student or business versions.

Also, make sure you haven't installed and used "Monolingual" or any other application which removes languages that are not used by you. That will cause the Office auto update application to not update or install the latest updates.

Click to expand...

^^^^^
This all just reinforces my aversion to MS products!

I know that Office is the standard, but talk about a minefield here for the unwitting soul.

Razormac said:

^^^^^
This all just reinforces my aversion to MS products!

I know that Office is the standard, but talk about a minefield here for the unwitting soul.

Click to expand...

I found that out the hard way with Office 2008 after I had used Monolingual to remove all the excess languages that I didn't need. Wound up having to reinstall Office after updating OS X with a combined update in order to get the languages that I didn't need back. A royal pain.

chscag said:

I found that out the hard way with Office 2008 after I had used Monolingual to remove all the excess languages that I didn't need. Wound up having to reinstall Office after updating OS X with a combined update in order to get the languages that I didn't need back. A royal pain.

Click to expand...

You and me both. I used Monolingual and ended up having to reinstall just so I could update Office. Now that I have a much larger HD, I'm not so concerned with freeing up space.

My experience with documents becoming asterisks

About two weeks ago I was working on a fairly long document (Microsoft 2011) when suddenly without warning, the entire document turned into lines of asterisks. I immediately closed the document and the popup box gave me the option to save or not to save and I chose not to save. I then reopened the document and had lost only a few minutes of my work. The same thing happened on a second document a few days later. I did the same procedure I had used before and recovered most of my document.
A few days ago, however, I was working on a third document involving pasting book reviews from a trusted on-line site, and without warning everything again turned to asterisks. This time, however, when I reopened my document, again after opting not to save, none of the 4 hours of work I had done—and saved regularly—was there, just 4 pages of work that I had done some days before. Then tonight I was working on a fourth document, and again it tuned into asterisks. I closed the document, but there was no option to save or not to save, and when I reopened the document, there were only asterisks. I do have a backup on a separate eternal hard drive from about 3 days ago, but I am hesitant to do anything until I know what is going on. I googled “document turns into asterisks” and found this forum and decided to post my experience in hopes that Microsoft can find something useful if they continue to review this forum. Any suggestions from anyone would be helpful. Thanks.

I have just had the same problem - Word 2011 on a MacBook. Is there an answer yet? Is it likely to happen again on my system, or is it more random than that? Just lost 500 words of a PhD.

word 2011 document changed to all asterisks--still a mystery

I have found no cause nor any solutions. It happened to 3 times in about 2 weeks, but I have had no more incidents in the last 2 and a half weeks. There was a Microsoft Office update that I downloaded, but I don't know if it contained a solution to the problem, or if I have just been lucky. Wish us both more good luck. Do back up often on an external hard drive, but, obviously, stop backing up any files with asterisks. I was able to recover most of what I lost by retrieving the damaged file from my external hard drive. I use SuperDuper to do my backups daily.