_doc files

[Mary]

A friend sends us word documents that arrive with a "_doc" extension, and
Word 2007 Home edition won't open it unless we manually change the extension
to ".doc."
Windows Vista seemingly won't allow me to name Word as the program to open
"_doc" files.
Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[JoAnn Paules]

Sounds like your friend is doing something funky and changing the extension.

 

[Jay Freedman]

A friend sends us word documents that arrive with a "_doc" extension, and
Word 2007 Home edition won't open it unless we manually change the extension
to ".doc."
Windows Vista seemingly won't allow me to name Word as the program to open
"_doc" files.
Thanks for any suggestions.

Anything starting with an underscore is NOT an extension. By
definition, an extension starts with a dot, never an underscore.
That's why Windows won't let you assign a program to open a "_doc"
extension -- because that cannot be an extension.

Your friend may be renaming the files on his end because his email
application, whatever it is, objects to documents as attachments. If
so, he's doing you no favors. Ask him to zip the documents instead.

 

[Graham Mayor]

Frankly I would be very suspicious of any attachment that ended in _doc as
this is clearly not the extension but part of the file name. You must set
Windows Vista to display the extensions of known file types, so that you
know what you are dealing with. It may well be that the true filename is
filename_doc.doc or filename_doc.docx. You may then need to re-associate
Word 2007 with the particular file type.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>

 

[Mary]

I'm sorry I was not precise enough in my language. The "_doc" is an
extension, the files are called "filename._doc."
Another friend has Word 2007 professional and she has no trouble opening
these files!

 

[Per Lund-Mathiesen, Norway]

I have been troubled with the same problem. When others opened multi-adress
mails with such attachments without problems and I could not find an
explanation on internet I had to start testing on my own. Luckily I have also
found the answer.
When the sender ends his filename with a full stop and the program
automatically adds ".doc", the filename ends up with "..doc".
Earlier versions of Word accept that apparently whereas my Word 2007
converts to the unreadable "._doc" requiring to be saved and renamed before
it is possible to open it.