Korean Text Shows as Boxes in Word — Fix

Boxes do not mean broken text — they mean there is no font to draw it

Rows of □ or ▯ are not a sign that the file is damaged. The characters are there, intact; what is missing is a font that has shapes for them. Korean has so many characters that fonts without Korean are common, which is why this shows up so often with Korean text.

What to check, in order

1. See whether the whole document is boxes or only certain paragraphs. If only some, the one font assigned to those paragraphs is the cause.
2. Select that paragraph and switch it to a different font. If the text appears right away, you have found the cause.
3. If everything is boxes, the document’s default font is the problem. Select all the body text and switch it to a font that includes Korean.

When you open it on this site

When a document opens, a Korean font is prepared along with it. On a slow connection or a busy device the font may not arrive in time; in that case the document does not hang — it opens without the font and a notice at the top of the screen tells you so. The text and formatting stay the same; only the line breaks differ from the original.