Word Documents

[China Doll]

Hello,

I've a couple of things I've emailed myself from a different computer in Word that I can't open up on this laptop. I know some Word documents aren't compatable but is it because this laptop has too old a version or word or too new a version to load it up please?

Cheers
China

Ps: If you have a fancy way of doing it, that'd be really appreciated but please keep the techy stuff short and simple as I'm a bit dense with this sort of thing and I'm not the administrator on the computer so if I have to download anything I won't be able to. (Thanks again!)

[Ethel]

We need to know what the file extension is - the bit after the dot.

For example, - .doc

[vehelpfulguy]

For years the file extension for Word documents was "DOC".

Now in Office 2007 they have changed it to DOCX.

If you have an old version of Office and you are trying to open up a DOCX file then it probably has no idea what it is.

[beso]

Download the "Office Compatibility Pack" from the Microsoft site. It updates older versions of Office to work with Office 2007 documents. It is free.

[China Doll]

Thank you. Both documents I'm trying to open from my email account and they have the title andthen .doc after the title.

They also have ~$ before the document title which I didn't put there but I don't know if that's relevant?

The Word on my computer says 2003 after it and the computer I did the work on originally I think would not have been particularly modern. If it was after 2003 though would I still have a problem?

[welshwil]

i think the $ means its a temporary file

[vehelpfulguy]

Yes I think the ~$ in front is a bad sign, it shows it is a temporary file.

Basically when you open a word document it creates a temporary file to work on (so the original does not get damaged or corrupted).

When you then SAVE the file you are working on it makes THAT the main word file (by removing the ~$), and deletes the other file.

So the fact you still have the ~$ in front means Word did not shut down properly, which is perhaps why it is not opening.

Go back to the original machine and see if you can find a copy of the file WITHOUT the ~$ in front as that will be the proper Word file.

[China Doll]

Oh bum. There in lies the problem VHG. Thanks for all your help!