How do I get my messages back(i.e .msg extensions)

I have been saving emails I received for each of my projects in their original form using the .msg extension(at one time I believe that this automatically happened)Recently all my saved messages(and I mean hundreds)the icon changed from the normal .msg envelope to an icon similar to Word but with the letters RF in blue.On clicking the icons which still has the .msg extension it would then Opens into a Word document with the .msg extension with all the details in the email converted to a kind of code i.e for eg.(?? ??? ? > ????  ????? ???? can someone please tell me how to get back the contents of all those emails and why this is happening now.I am using Office 2000.If I then saved the documents as HTML and opened it I still get the above codes with the original content of the email interspersed in it in a kind of HTML language format.