What did I do to this Word document?

October 18, 2017 5:09 AM

I was working on a simple Word document last night. I thought I hit command-P to print, but nothing happened--except that when I looked at the screen again, most of it was filled with Chinese characters. What?

My computer is a 2012 non-retina MacBook Pro. I use Word for Mac 2011. I really thought I hit command-P like always do to print. But most of the English text is gone, replaced with what looks to me like Chinese characters in a font called ＭＳ 明朝 (Body Asian). There is nothing I can do to change that font--selecting the text and choosing a different font does nothing. Trying to undo the changes also does nothing. Somehow, while trying to print, I managed to do something that seems to have borked my document permanently. What happened? And is there any way to fix it?

posted by Pater Aletheias to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

More than ten years ago, a similar thing happened to someone else on Metafilter. Does that help, or is it a different issue?
posted by easternblot at 5:17 AM on October 18, 2017

Response by poster: It really does sound similar, but I don't think that's it. I just double-checked my keyboard settings, and U.S. English is the only one installed. I also went to Tools->Language like they did and confirmed the document is in U.S. English.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 6:33 AM on October 18, 2017

This looks relevant - "Go to Word>Preferences>Edit and turn OFF "Match font with keyboard". Now, it won't switch the font at all when you type Chinese (so you won't ever get the font you don't like)." From here.
posted by Jacob G at 6:38 AM on October 18, 2017

I have absolutely no idea--I'm sorry--but I did this to myself a couple months ago somehow, only in Spanish. I think the document must not have been too valuable, or I was able to get it back quite easily after a bit of fiddling around on Google, or something.

I vaguely remember that were two different language settings I tried in Word itself that eventually fixed it, but I don't remember what they were. The problem was so out of the blue that the solution didn't make any particular sense to me, so I forgot it...
posted by tapir-whorf at 6:40 AM on October 18, 2017

Language settings are under the Tools menu, I know. You might look there and see what it says. Try selecting English and hitting the default button.

I can't for the life of me find a keyboard shortcut in MS's help pages that would trigger that, though.

This Ask is currently the 4th google hit for "os x word 'body asian'", so congratulations!
posted by middleclasstool at 6:49 AM on October 18, 2017

There was a more recent ask involving a mac and word and involuntary change to Chinese chracters. I am on the phone so no link but i found by search with the search function search ing for Chinese word, and it brought up your s and the one from 14 September 2017. There are some suggestions there, but don't know if they were useful.
posted by 15L06 at 7:02 AM on October 18, 2017

Here is the recent AskMe that 15L06 mentions. Unfortunately, while it seems like the same problem, I can't see any solutions in that thread.
posted by spielzebub at 8:37 AM on October 18, 2017

This forum thread from 2013 has a similar issue; it turned out to be a problem with the Cambria font, which for some reason was using the Chinese font for apostrophes. Deleting it and re-installing the font fixed it.

No guarantee that'll work for you - "my font has become ＭＳ 明朝" is apparently a recurring bug that doesn't have a reliable solution.

While that's not directly connected to printing, interaction with the print drivers can do odd things to a document if there are problems with the layout, which could be caused by an invisible font that's not supposed to be there.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:09 AM on October 18, 2017

I doubt you borked it yourself, to be honest. This kind of thing happens for many reasons, and "user error" is only one of 'em. I am a localization nerd - 100% of my career is about multilingual documentation. I have had this happen to me before, but I have experienced pretty much every single thing that can go wrong with Word files w/r/t language and writing systems. I mean, your file is probably corrupt and best thrown away, but there may be a way to rescue some or all of the content.

The first thing I would try in your shoes is to Save As RTF and then open that RTF again with Word - or, even better, with LibreOffice or some other Word-file-compatible text editor. Does that fix it?

Second: if you select all your text and whack Command+D, does your font menu have one or two dropdowns for fonts? Maybe you have an "Asian Fonts" dropdown now? Can you change the font successfully here?
posted by BrunoLatourFanclub at 3:54 PM on October 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Interesting thoughts, BrunoLatourFanclub, but no results.

I tried saving as an RTF and opening in Open Office. It looked exactly the same. I selected all the text and changed fonts, but the Chinese characters were still there, even though the whole document shows to be in Times New Roman now.

I tried Command-D, but there's only one dropdown. I changed the font there, but it only affected the remaining English words.

This remains the weirdest word processing glitch I've ever encountered.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 6:46 PM on October 18, 2017

Response by poster: And now I've tried all the suggestions in this thread, including reinstalling Cambria, and no improvement. This may just remain a mystery.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 6:54 PM on October 18, 2017

Response by poster: HEY I FIXED IT! (Not that this will help anyone else who has this issue.)

I originally saved this file in my Dropbox folder. I realized Dropbox might have a complete but unborked previous version saved AND IT DID. I still have no idea what happened, but I got all my work back and I am super happy and I thank you all for thinking about this problem with me.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 6:59 PM on October 18, 2017 [3 favorites]