Strange characters on Pages - malware?

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In different existing documents in "Pages" on my Ipad I suddenly find senseless characters like letters or numbers or symbols in different styles, mostly arbitrary distributed additional to the original text but sometimes also replacing letters of the existing text. This happens independent of my working on the text, I find it when I open a document. Is this malware connected with the app and how should I deal with it?
 

chscag

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It's not malware but most likely bad or incorrect font(s). Where did the documents originate from?
 
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All created by myself. My own text, written on Ipad. Mostly a diary I wrote when travelling in India. Also a table with my itinerary.
 

chscag

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All created by myself. My own text, written on Ipad. Mostly a diary I wrote when travelling in India. Also a table with my itinerary.

Then there shouldn't be any font differences. Were you storing your documents in the cloud while traveling? If you were, it's possible that some corruption occurred. Other than that, I have no other explanation I can think of which would cause the errors.
 
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No, I did not store anything in the cloud.

I am considering to do a backup on my iMac and then do a reset on the Ipad, maybe even cancel my Pages App totally and load it again.
It is worrying if things like that happen without any activity of myself. When I detected it I immediately sent a copy as email to my Imac in order to have a safety copy of about 100 pages of my diary.

Thank you for dealing with my problem.
 
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If you downloaded new fonts, the problem is malware in the fonts, otherwise I'd guess that Pages is unhappy about something. You can't switch between the old version of Pages & the Maverick version of Pages, as the old Pages won't cooperate with the newer version.
 
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Hello rainbowcat, I did not change anything with my Ipad after downloading the Pages App shortly after I purchased the Ipad two years ago. So I guess it is the old version, but I did not download any other font. I also did not upgrade to iOS7, because I am happier with the old version as long as i can use it. I'd rather like to make Pages happy again if I only knew what's wrong!
But i am glad my problem is not forgotten unsolved. It is not so dramatic now because after I am back from india I copied most of the documents to my iMac and work with that. but the next journey will come and I should like to have my Ipad straight by then.
Thank you!
 
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chas_m

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When I hear of a problem like you describe, it usually stems from two sources:

1. Someone has used a utility like Monolingual to remove "excess" languages and fonts they think they don't need, accidentally erasing a required system font;

2. Font on the local machine has gone corrupt for various and unknown reasons, or

3. Document has gone corrupt in copying, or on the disk because the disk is starting to fail
 
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Thank you, chas_m,

1. does not apply. I did not do it and nobody else has access to my Ipad.

2. this problem only appeared in Pages. But I realize it is only pages where different fonts are relevant, so this is possible.

3. the problem appeared in original documents, not after copying.
If this is a hint that the disc is starting to fail - only after less than two years after purchase that is a serious problem. I wonder if this is a reason to try go for my three years applecare guarantee?

The strange thing is, that these characters appeared suddenly not connected to any operations I actively did on the documents. I opened the table with my travel plan e.g., i.e. dates, cities, trains or hotels and suddenly there were these letters or numbers in a different font - additions to, not conversions of my own writing, sometimes between words, sometimes ripping words apart by appearing right in the middle of a word. And since they were of a different size, sometimes bold, the whole document looked very strange.
 
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chas_m

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I'm sorry, I missed the part about it being on an iPad. Obviously #1 doesn't apply and I doubt any of the my other explanations apply either. There's no "disk" to go bad (well, there is storage and conceivably it could have an issue, but I'm really doubting this).
 

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