Cannot Open Word attachment

[Aadimoolan]

I am using Windows Mail as my default email client on Windows Vista. Also having Office 2007 installed. When I receive any attachment in my mail, especially a Word Attachment am just unable to open it. When I click the attachment, it properly asks me whether I want to open or save the document, I click to Open. But suddenly it gives me an error message saying:

"This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Create an association in the Set Associations control panel."

The problem is only while opening the document/attachment directly from the mail, and not after saving it on desktop. When I save it to desktop and double click, it opens properly. Any idea what could be the problem and how can I solve this?

[Landon]

I have been through this problem earlier and did a lot of research and spend many hours. Finally after a hard work I managed to get it fixed. After reading this I thought to post the workaround so that it may help you as well. Here is what you need to do to get rid of this error message:

• Go to Start menu and type “File Association”, Press Enter. This will open all extensions available for windows and their related programs.
• Scroll down and look for .doc. Once found select the same and ‘Change Button’.
• Now select any other program instead of WORD (Adobe reader for example) and click OK.
• You should now see the .doc type associated with the program that you chose. Now onward if you click any .doc file, it will try to open with Adobe reader that is obviously not gonna work.
• So, now again select Doc file, click Change Program and select MS Word as default program for the same.

That’s it. Hopefully now onwards whenever you will click doc attachment, you wont be getting any error.

[Patton]

It is bit surprising to hear again and again that we need to make the settings again and again in Vista. Why not Vista stick with the changes done once?