I know nothing. Trying to save a document as a template, click Save
As...Doc. Template. I then open the template from Documents and it asks me
about converting the file (what the heck is that?). No matter which
conversion choice I make, the document opens as gibberish/Greek/what have
you. Help. Same thing happens when I save a scanned form as a document
template.

What version of Word are you using? When you save as a document template
(.dot or .dotx, the latter being specific to Word 2007), the file should be
saved into the User templates location. Once there, while you *can* open it,
the usual practice is to choose File - New, and point to that template to
create a new Document # file based on that template. Except during
development, you usually wouldn't edit a template directly.

For the immediate issue, my guess is that you're using Word 2002 or earlier
and that Files of type is "stuck" on Recover text from any file. When you
choose File - Open, make sure that Files of type is set to Word documents.

Another guess is, if documents/templates aren't being recognized as Word
documents/templates, your files might be infected by a virus, since that's
the usual cause of Word not being able to recognized its own documents and
templates.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com
"glassychick" <glassychick@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:A3D2A55B-A204-4655-96C1-6A15566C2FEC@microsoft.com...
>I know nothing. Trying to save a document as a template, click Save
> As...Doc. Template. I then open the template from Documents and it asks
> me
> about converting the file (what the heck is that?). No matter which
> conversion choice I make, the document opens as gibberish/Greek/what have
> you. Help. Same thing happens when I save a scanned form as a document
> template.