For reasons unknown to me, I try to open documents in Microsoft Word and the open with small squares! Or symbols etc. I have tried the converter etc.
What went wrong?

the small squares are due to an improper format. These are characters or blocks of characters that word is unsure how to interpret and thus displays the ascii value of them. Try holding alt+# eg and number and see what happens many of the large numbers are squares. (these are beyond normal use) perhaps these files were saved in another program? ms works also saves .doc files, as well as a few other programs.

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</Dream In Code>
-William. § (marvin_gohan)

There are only a limited number of word processing extensions. Research what they are. Then make copies of the original, each with a different extension. Start with WordPad or NotPad, they may give you a clue, then work through the others. No luck? Send MS a sample of the file, and ask them what it is!