For some reason, after I open a document (which I've saved as Word 97-2003--I'm running Word 2007), I'm now getting some kind of "conversion" going on.
For example: I have a document named "My books". After I save it as Word 97-2003, the next time I access it, it is no longer shown as "My Books", but "~nes My books" in my documents listing.
Then I get a small box come up on my screen that says "Select the encoding that makes your document readable.
Text encoding:
Windows (default), MS-DOS, Other encoding"
Then another window which shows some language (?) choices: Japanese (several choices), IBM (several choices) and many more.
How can I stop my documents from trying to be converted?
I have no idea what's going on, or why. This just started; nothing new has been installed nor changed. I'm running Win7 64-bit.

I'm not sure what's going on, but are you saving as .doc or as .docx ?

I'm saving my documents as .doc

Have you been keeping your antivirus up to date?

Yes, but I'm going to run everything again right now. A couple days back Malwarebytes and Spybot came back clean and Norton has not found anything.

You may be experiencing a difference between the 2003 and 2007 programs in that 2007 uses a different protocol when saving filenames.

This Microsoft article says 2007 uses a new format for saving files, and this may be why you see different names for previously saved word docs.

The easiest fix would be to simply use Save As and re-save the docs using the name you prefer.

Homer,
I have always used "Save as" when saving files. Right now, I'm trying to re-save (if that's a word)the documents that I was having the problems with; I'll see if the correct names "hold", or if they change again tomorrow. Strangest thing I've ever seen.
All's well with all the scans I just ran: no virus or malware found.

That would be .docx instead of .doc.

Mary, make sure when you save that you are using the selection for the older version of Word (***Word 97-2003***) from the dropdown menu. Simply changing the extension from .docx to .doc won't do it.

Jenny, I've been doing that all the time (saving as Word 97-2003) since I know that not everyone is using Word 2007 and if I need to send it on, I want the recipient to be able to open it.

Edit: I just opened my document and used "save as" to save it (in Word 97-2003,as I did before) and I could see for a split second that "~nes" in front of the document name and then it disappeared and the document saved correctly. Beats me. Nothing changes within the document.