I have submitted this question previously, when it was only me having this problem. However, now multiple users are experiencing it and I am going to throw it out once more for possible theories.
The problem is this: we have a parsing engine written in C++ that takes RTF files and puts them together to generate a document that can consist of either several page documents or several hundred page documents... depending on the document type selected, and the user selections made in our program. The "engine" inserts information into the RTF files in various locations within each file based on the user choices as well.
In many cases, users will want to edit the RTF files to make changes to the text (the RTF files generated are legal documents, so there are things they want modified). So we go into Word and make the required change, perhaps changing a word or a paragraph, saving the file, and then re-generating the document. Previously there were no problems doing this.
In the past couple of weeks, many users have suddenly experienced consistent problems editing almost all RTF files within our program. Any changes made to any of the RTF files will result in WEBDINGS within the file that was edited. If the file is replaced with the original (ie, we restore the original) then the webdings disappear, and everything is fine again (but the user's changes are lost). Therefore, we have no way to edit the files.
The computers all seem to be running Windows Vista and either Office 2003 or Office 2007. It is not apparent that any recent Windows updates have occurred that would cause this, because there are no updates that have been installed to all computers. Windows LiveOneCare is installed on all workstations involved, and there have been no virii or virus-like behavior.
All computers have removed the WEBDING.TTF file. There are no instances of WEBDINGS in the registry. Fonts have been removed from the registry and re-installed.
This was not happening a few weeks ago and we have not been able to determine what would suddenly cause us to be unable to edit the files without causing webdings to appear.
Any thoughts on how to fix, where to look for a solution, would be appreciated.
