problems opening documents

[Guest]

I can not open other documents that were sent to me or that I copied to a
disk and try to reopen on my home computer. When I do they show up
encrypted. These same documents will open on other computers that dont have
vista. The initial message states something about opening on wordpad. Im
not sure if thats the problem.

 

[Malke]

I can not open other documents that were sent to me or that I copied to a
disk and try to reopen on my home computer. When I do they show up
encrypted. These same documents will open on other computers that dont have
vista. The initial message states something about opening on wordpad. Im
not sure if thats the problem.

It sounds like these documents were created in a word processing
program, possibly MS Word. If you don't have Word installed, you won't
be able to open the documents or if you can open them in Wordpad, you'll
just see code. Perhaps this is what you mean by "encrypted".

Enable the ability to see the file extension if you haven't already done
this by first going to the Control Panel. Then:

If you are in the Classic View do the following:

1. Double-click on the Folder Options icon.
2. Click on the View tab.
3. Go to step 5.

If you are in the Control Panel Home view do the following:

1. Click on the Appearance and Personalization link.
2. Click on Show Hidden Files or Folders.
3. Go to step 5.

On the View tab, remove the checkmark from the checkbox labeled "Hide
extensions for known file types", Apply/OK out. Now look at the name of
one of the documents. It will somefile.xxx where the "xxx" is something
like "doc" or "docx". What is it? If the extension is .doc or .docx,
you'll need MS Word installed (or another program that can read MS Word
files such as OpenOffice) in order to open the file. The .docx extension
shows that the file was create in MS Word 2007 and saved in its native
format. If you have an older version of MS Word, you can download a file
converter from the MS Office website.


Malke

 

[piffles]

I have received a document attachment in Wordpad. Although I have wordpad
on my computer, I usually open up in Microsoft Word 2007. I have tried
copying and pasting the document to Wordpad but it is still unreadable. Can
you assist me please?

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

It means the encoding with which the file was made is not compatible with
wordpad, you will need to use Word or another program that can understand
the encoding in order for it to display properly. In Word 2007, the default
format is .docx, and if they are using that format I don't think Wordpad can
open them.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Malke]

I have received a document attachment in Wordpad. Although I have wordpad
on my computer, I usually open up in Microsoft Word 2007. I have tried
copying and pasting the document to Wordpad but it is still unreadable. Can
you assist me please?

Save the attachment to your user's Documents folder if you are sure it
is safe (scan with your antivirus first). Then right-click it and choose
Open With MS Word. You don't copy/paste into Word - you open with it.

If this doesn't work, what happens? If you get an error message, quote
the exact text. What is the file extension of the attached file? Have
you asked the sender with what program they created the file? Which was it?


Malke