There used to be a program called something like Word Reader that would at least let you see Word files even if you didn't have the program. But that isn't needed here since you're not trying to open Word, even an ancient version of it.

Notepad is a more basic program than WordPad, and should be able to read the contents just fine, with the notation (as mentioned above) that those little boxes will appear for unrecognized symbols.

Have you considered uninstalling and reinstalling your WordPad software? That might help.

SRS