Word2011 has font problems opening older Word documents

Question

Word2011 has font problems opening older Word documents

Hi,

I've got a MacBook Pro running OSX 10.6.8.

When I use 2011 Microsoft Office's Word to open a .doc file that is a "Microsoft Word 97 - 2004 document" (according do the Spotlight comments) I get a file that looks empty. But it's not, the fonts are messed up. If I select everything and change the fonts to something like "Times" I can see everything, but the formatting is completely messed up. Here's what I see when I open a file using Word '11:

On the other hand, if I open the same document with Pages '09 V4.1 the document opens just fine and I can see it as it is with all the fonts and formatting is what it should be. Here's what I see when I open the same file using Pages '09:

Does anyone know what I need to do to get the "right" font and format just using Word '11?

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Aug 14, 2011 9:19 PM

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Answer 1

sig

Level 8

35,862 points

Aug 15, 2011 10:24 PM in response to James Elliott1

You probably don't have the fonts that were selected when the original document was created. That said post in the MS forums for their input to your querry.

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/support

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Answer 2

Kurt Lang

Level 9

58,152 points

Aug 16, 2011 8:47 AM in response to James Elliott1

To add to sig's suggestion. It also may be that the Office font cache data is corrupt.

Close all Office applications. Remove the following files. The tilde (~) indicates your home account.

~/Library/Caches/com.microsoft.browserfont.cache

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office Font Cache (11)

For Office 2008, the location of the second item is:

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008/Office Font Cache (12)

For Office 2011, the location is:

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2011/Office Font Cache

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