Those boxes are usually displayed when certain symbols or fonts aren't
recognized.

1) The documents are in a rather special font, which isn't installed on the
new laptop, and have of course disappeared after formatting the old one. Try
changing the font.

2) Have you tried opening the documents in Wordpad (or even notepad) to see
whether these will display the original text?

i saved word documents and transfered them onto my other laptop. when i
opened them i get tiny squares all over the page and no letters.

I have tried nearly everything to get my documents back, how can i do it
please.

my old laptop is now reformatted and wont open on that either.

Thankyou