[Peter T. Daniels]

Literally "random symbols"? Or are they asterisk, dagger, double
dagger, section mark? If they're really random, you might have a big
problem, but if they're asterisk dagger etc., you change them back to
numbers in the footnote format panel, which you get at through Insert
Reference Footnote. Select the first footnote reference mark, open
that panel, and change the Format dropdown to "1, 2, 3". If you're
lucky, it might switch all of them back, or you might have to repeat
the process for each one.

On Sep 29, 1:18*pm, Mark wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" wrote:
How is it "messed up"?

What version of Word?

Did you save the document to your hard drive before you opened it?
(Don't open a Word file directly from the email attachment.)

On Sep 29, 11:55 am, Mark wrote:
I recently opened a document sent to me and the footnote numbering was messed
up. this does not occur when the doc is opened on any other computer. I have
tried resaving the doc and resending it, this does not solve the problem. I
would appreciate any help!

it is messed up in that the footnote numbers are not displayed- instead there are random symbols.

It is an early version of word 2003, I don't know exactly which one.
And I opened it after it was saved to the hard drive.