okay so I have a P4 1.8 GHz 512RAM computer. XP Pro in a domain. I was just doing some system cleanup (for our Mayor no less) and I finish running CCleaner, and leave the computer. 30 seconds later he comes and gets me and says that he can't open his word documents.

He can open files from file>open in word and it works perfectly fine. If he tries it from windows explorer (meaning he just double clicks on a .doc file) it opens word, but it doesn't open the file. If he right clicks on a .txt file and says open with word it opens fine... I am at a loss I have tried messing with the file extention .doc to no avail, any help would be great.

The best advice is to grab the Microsoft Office installation CD's then run the Repair function (the uninstaller and the installer should give that option). The Repair function will fix all the file types etc., in a very short amount of time.

After you've repaired MS Office:
1. Run CCleaner
2. Click Cleaner -> Applications, then look under the Applications list
3. Untick MS Office

Should look something like this:

I have completely uninstalled MS office, and reinstalled it to no avail. please any other help would be great.... I don't know what to do and again this is a very important client.

Worth a look in case it helps, scroll down to creating file associations

http://www.samspublishing.com/articles/art...qNum=8&rl=1

Go to Control Panel > Folder Options > Files Type (or Type Files, i don't know)

Scroll down until you find .doc type file and select it.

Press Advanced button

Check if Open is the default option (written in bold)


Note: I own an italian version of WinXP, so what said above may
sound a little different for you, hope this can make some sense

that was one of the first things I tried... I just tried to run a whole windows repair. I have just uninstalled office xp and installed office 2003... anymore ideas?

Something must be really messed up with that computers registry if not even uninstalling, and reinstalling MS Office will fix it. The MS Office installation or repair installation automatically registers filetypes and shouldn't have any consideration of what's already using the .doc format. Maybe it's something that Dial-a-fix can repair as a last resort, but then again you may be formatting and reinstalling Windows if the registry is really screwed up.

The only other suggestion I'd have to possibly get the .doc format to open in Word is:
1. Right click any .doc file
2. Select Open With->Choose Program (you may not have the Choose Program option there if .doc isn't registered in any event just select Open With).
3. Select to use the actual .exe file that's MS Word which is WINWORD.EXE, it should be somewhere in a sub-directory of C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office

This is what i see pressing Edit button there.

(the second field is
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\WINWORD.EXE" /n )




Hope this help

Mines a bit different mine has /dde tacked onto the end in Word 2003, it has this in that second field for Open:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\WINWORD.EXE" /n /dde

This is what mine looks like:


In any event I still think the solution is to run the repair installation feature, after all Microsoft included it for just that and it's likely other parts of Office are also not working with the default installed settings.

This may help How to launch Word from IE

I had the same problem. I also couldn't open Word attachments from my email. I reinstalled Office and downloaded Service Pack 3 for it. It still wouldn't work normally. I found that if Word was already open, then the documents would open (either from email or from Explorer folders). I also noticed that Word was running a virus scan every time I tried to open a document from Word (file>open), slowing down the process. So, after some research, I found some advice about unchecking the option to scan MS Office documents in my Antivirus software. I went to Norton (which came with my Verizon DSL) > Virus and Spyware Protection Options > Miscellaneous > [uncheck] Turn on scanning for Microsoft Office documents. I also ran McAfee Virtual Technician (since I still have that software on my computer), but I don't know if that made a difference. Now I can open Word documents just like I used to.

I hope this saves some other newbie(s) like myself some time and frustration.

Turning off the antivirus scan could possibly be a security risk when running downloaded Word documents especially those with macros in them that could possibly be malicious and cause a code execution to infect your PC. Therefore make sure you virus scan any and all downloaded Word documents before opening them.