Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
In middle of working on a Word document (which has been regularly filed over a couple of days of work) suddenly the whole document (including what had been filed before) turned into asterisks.
MacBook (13-inch Mid 2010)
Open a new Word doc - a blank page - and write some text. Do you see the correct characters? If yes, go back to the original doc, type command + a (short cut for select All), then type command + c to copy the asterisks.
Now click on the blank page and type command + v (paste).
Unfortunately it did not help. When I hit Command + a it somehow just jumped to another document that I was not working on. I also tried copying a part of the asterisks and pasting it into a document where I was able to type and it just came up as asterisks (not the part where I had just typed but where I pasted the old text)
Which version of MS Word?
It is Version Word Mac 14.0
Try this: select a few lines of asterisks and change the font to something like Helvetica or Arial - any common font.
Too bad -- it just makes the asterisks look slightly different
OK - my last resort when I have MSWord problems is to call the Microsoft help line. It's a crap-shoot, but you may get to someone, a real person, who knows what's going on. Plan on being on hold for some time!
In the US: 800 642 7676
The web page:
https://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?gprid=15662&st=1&wfxredirect=1&sd =gn
Relax. You can get your paper back. Here is the fix.
http://golovyan.blogspot.com/2014/01/office-for-mac-asterisk-bug-fix-that.html
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I recognize this is an old thread, but I had this problem today and was looking here and elsewhere for answers. My response is for people who may be as clueless about their Mac as I am. After nearly losing my mind when I thought I lost my document to the asterisk bug, I figured out that Time Machine, if you have it enabled, automatically backs up all your files every hour for the previous 24 hrs and does daily backups for the past month. I'm not talking about your back-up drive that you connect to Time Machine, which is all that I thought it did. This is separate and internal to the system. Just click on Enter Time Machine, and you can scroll through to find your saved document prior to the bug. Hope this helps somebody and saves you from the unnecessary despair I experienced.
Hi! How do I get to the internal backup files of Time Machine? Thanks a lot for your help.
Entire word document has turned to asterisks
