Instead of Word the Document opens in Wordpad

[pushpendra]

I am facing problem while opening some Word Documents. I have installed the Office 2003 on my PC. Whenever I try to open the documents they get opened in the Wordpad instead of Word. I also tried to change from the option "open with" but that is also not working. Does anyone know why this is happening.?? Please help me to sort out this problem.

[Zenon]

In the Windows Explorer click on the Tools option. You will find the option at the top of the Menu bar. In tools select the Folder Options. In that option select the Tab of File Types. Than change that to the DOC. You can try this for opening the Document into the Word. Have you tried to open the Word first from the MS Office.?? Do you tried to import the file from there.?? Is it working fine?? Please provide the sufficient information so that I can help you better..

[JonathanD]

Exactly which documents you are trying to open. Is it .docx?? Because these are the extensions of the files that are created in MS Office 2007 which are not compatible with the MS Office 2003. So I would like to suggest you to download the Compatibility Pack from Microsoft. Maybe after downloading this pack you will able to open the documents from the Word. Also with the Compatibility Pack, you can use some previous versions of Word to open Office Word 2007 documents that were saved in .docx and .docm formats. Although you can open Office Word 2007 files in previous versions of Word, you may not be able to change some items that were created by using the new or enhanced features in Office Word 2007.

[Macarenas]

I was having the similar issue but on Windows 2000. If the documents are opening in the Wordpad instead of Word then I fixed by these steps :

• Click on Start and then click on Run.
• In the open box type control folders and then press enter.
• After Folder option gets opened, go to the file types' tab and scroll down to find and highlight .doc. Click 'change' and add word from there.
• If you are not able to do that then click on advanced' then edit and now you should able to browse to winword.exe and add it manually.
• Then click on Apply and then OK.

[ThoMas321]

The documents can open in the Wordpad instead of the Word when your MS Office gets corrupted. So I would like to recommend you to install the MS Office again freshly. Before reinstalling make sure that you are removing the existing version of the MS Office fully, otherwise there are chances of getting the same Error again. It would be better to remove the existing version and then installing it again.

[Sam.D]

I would like to suggest you to scan your system by an updated anti virus. You can use the updated Norton or AVG for free of cost. So you can download that for free. After downloading install that Anti virus and that scan your system. After scanning if the problem is persisting, then try to remove the application and then reinstall the application. Hope that will fix your problem.