Random dots/periods when converting Word doc to PDF

So I had WHAT I THOUGHT were dots at the beginning of some fields (text entries in a table) in a PDF I was trying to create from a Word document. When I zoomed way way in, it turned out that they were tiny bits of text before each bit of text, "0B, 1B, 2B," etc. Turned out those were "hidden bookmarks" from the Word document (someone else's doc, not mine). Once I told Acrobat to stop creating bookmarks during the conversion, my "dots" (which were not dots) went away, and the PDF came out perfectly.

It took me well over an hour to figure all that out, though -posting here in case it helps anyone.

 I had some problems with dots creating a "best for printing" pdf from word document. I changed the settings to best for electronic distribution and it fixed the problem. Maybe that helps.

Looks like they might be microdots, put into the PDF at the beginning of every paragraph.

When you exported to PDF, did you check an option for "Advanced" tagging? If so, uncheck it and export a new PDF.