Unable to open a MS-Word doent?

I have a MS-Word doent (.doc) which I saved yesterday. When I tried to open it today, I get the message " SELECT THE ENCODING THAT MAKES THE DOENT READABLE". I tried almost all the encoding options that were displayed but nothing seems to work. Some wired characters are displayed instead of the text I typed yesterday. Can someone please advice how to recover the contents of my original doent ?