Hi, Dave.
Key question: What kind of documents?
Notepad is a simple text editor. That is, it can show only ASCII
characters, such as alphanumerics and punctuation. To be a little more
technical, it can show only 7-bit characters, not 8-bit, so it can show only
127 out of the 255 possible characters. This is fine for straight text
files.
But Word inserts LOTS of control characters into the text of the document.
These inserted characters cause Word to change fonts, add underscores,
center titles, and MANY other functions. Word understands these characters,
but Notepad does not; all Notepad can do with them is show us the symbols,
which appear as "rubbish" in a text editor. Other applications use similar
control characters for formatting and other functions in their files.
If you know which program (Word? Excel? Quicken?) created the file, open
it in that application. The file extension often indicates which
application created the file: .doc for Word, .xls for Excel, etc. Look in
Folder Options | File Types to match most extensions with their
applications. In many cases, you can simply double-click on the filename in
Windows Explorer and the proper application will start - with that file
loaded.
If those techniques don't work, then you'll need more help from some
friendly geek to try to rescue the files. Notepad can only show you the
text and what you are seeing: "rubbish" for the control characters.
RC
