Word for Mac 2011 - file corrupted

Hi Guys, when editing my document in word for mac 2011 the word got frozen for a while, the text disappeared and instead of the text the documents is full of asterisk symbols (*). It probably happened during the autosaving but I'm not sure. Unfortunately, no document either in AutoRecovery folder or Temp folder. The document is possible to open but word is freezing then. I tried to save it as .rtf or .txt but it did not help. Any idea how to recover the document? Thanks a lot.

Have you updated your MS Office 2011 with the latest patches and service packs? The asterisk problem was fixed a while back with a service pack issued by Microsoft.

Unless you have a backup of the file it's probably too late to save it. Auto Recovery in Word is useless and does not work to recover a document intact. In Word preferences under "save" make sure you check off "always make a backup".

If the document still exists, instead of using Word to open it try using TextEdit to open the document. You may be able to recover some of it that way.

Thanks for info and clues. I have updated now. Hopefully, it does not happen again. I also found the backup option, unfortunately, after the document corrupted. I tried to open document in TextEdit, it is the same, full of asterisk :-( Fortunately, my loses aren't so significant and almost got to the point I was before I lost the document, as I have made one back-up version Sunday evening.... Next time, hopefully, I won't be such a fool.