If you don't have MS Office you can get
Open Office for free:
www.openoffice.org
It can create, open and save to and from any
MS Office format, although I'm not certain about
the new .docx format. That should let you open
nearly all attachments and resave them as something
more usable.
But it won't solve the problem of
aquaintances who think that opening any file is just
"something built into every computer". Microsoft
built one of their only two profitable businesses
on that particular ignorance. Millions of people buy
MS Office and don't realize that it uses proprietary
formats. Then those people start sending .docs to their
friends and their friends think that they have no choice
but to buy MS Office if they want to use their PC fully.
In the corporate world and academia, MS Office is
virtually required - in large part because people are
embarassed to say, "Gee, I feel stupid, but I can't
open that file you sent."
Yet the only real reason to use Word is to make an
inpressive, logo-clad presentation that looks like -
and will print out as - official-looking business stationery.
I always ask people, if they must use Word, to save
the file as a .txt file. That way it's easy to open and
often 1/10 the size of a Word .doc file. And actually,
you can usually read a Word .doc file in Notepad as text,
if necessary. When you open it that way you'll see loads
of gibberish in the file, which is bloat and formatting
information. But somewhere buried in that should be the
actual file content. (That's assuming your .doc doesn't
have graphics embedded that you need to see.)
> Cannot open Word Document into Microsoft Works Word Processor NOR an XLS
file
> into Adobe - both email attachments. When I click on the attachment, I
get a
> window asking if I want to Open/ Save or Cancel. If I click on Open, I
keep
> getting a repeat of the same window. If I click on Save, it asks me
whereto.
> I click, Save after designating lthe file and it downloads successfully.
> However it will not open. Just goes around in circles. In the case of
the
> XLS file, I tried to open it with Adobe and received a message "Not a
> supported file type".
>
> I went to download "winhelponline" for a document fix and when I attempted
> to run it, I got a message "Microsoft Word was not found in your system.
> This utility will now quit." I have Microsoft Works Word Processor with
my
> Vista Premium! Does anyone have a solution?
Linear Mode
