Microsoft Word and Pages question

My aunt was using Pages for her work, but the people she would send the docs to, used Word so she would have to export them and change the format. I convinced her to download Word and it is not working correctly. When she opens her old pages documents in Work, they are written in some weird code like this:

L·ĮĮÔĹŃĴ ŁÏÓÔĜĮİŃĮÓİÏŐNĒĹŃĬĮ ŌĮ ĶÏİ ÔŌŇÑĮŇÑŁĮ ÓÔĮÑÕÑÕŃĮŎÑĮĬÔĮİŁŐÏÔÔĶĮ


Also, when she open a blank document in Pages and starts to type, it comes out in those weird characters. Is she doing something wrong or is there a way to fix this? I did notice that when she copies stuff from pages and its highlighted, there is a character at the end of every sentence that looks like a P, but with 2 lines. Thanks

You convinced her to download Word from where? Did she buy Mac Office direct from Microsoft or some other authorized retailer? Mac Word is not sold by itself as far as I'm aware. Also which version is it?

Recent versions of Pages can save documents in both Word formats: doc and docx, so there should be no problem with compatibility. The "P" character with the two lines at the end of a sentence is called a "Paragraph" marker and in Word contains the formatting of the previous sentence or paragraph.

Her friend has a teacher's copy of office.

We're not going to provide any help with an illegal copy. Please tell your aunt to buy a copy of Mac Office Home and Student version from the MS store, Amazon, NewEgg, or one of many other on line retailers. I've seen the single install version for as low as $94.00 and that not only includes Word, but also includes Powerpoint and Excel.

It's not an illegal version. The teachers copy gives her unlimited licenses. Why would that be illegal?

You're probably referring to the Academic version of Mac Office: LINK Read through the licensing requirements. Regardless if the teacher has unlimited licenses (which I don't think is true anyway) your aunt is likely not a student nor is eligible for an academic copy.

ok, thanks