Change shortcut to open document in Word 2003, not 2007

[jms]

I don't know how this happened. I have a document shortcut on my desktop
which, up until yesterday, opened the document in Word 2003. Now the
shortcut opens the document in Word 2007 (which I cannot bear; it is much too
confusing to use). At the top it shows the document name with "Compatability
Mode" in brackets following. How can I get the shortcut to open in the old
Word program? (I did try creating a new shortcut and deleting the old one
and it works the first time, but as soon as I close the document and use the
shortcut again, it defaults to the new stupid Word version.) Please help!
Thanks.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Right-click on the shortcut, choose "Open With," and pick (at random)
one of the two lines for WinWord that you see. Check whether the
correct one opens. If you want all .doc files to use Word2003 and not
Word2007, then close Word and go through the procedure again,
remembering to choose the correct WinWord, and check the box that says
something like "Always use this application to open files with this
extension."

 

[jms]

Thank you for this, Peter. I tried this and it has always worked in the
past, but not this time. I tried again as per your directions, just in
case. I also right clicked on the shortcut, chose Properties, and see that
now the Open With default is Word 7. The "Always use this application to
open files with this extension" is checked but greyed out so I can't change
it. I go to Browse, choose the correct winword.exe file, but it will not
change the default from 7 back to 2003. This is *very* frustrating! If you
have more ideas, anyone, I'd appreciate hearing them.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Is it possible that you can't do this in a Shortcut, but you have to
do it with an actual file? Open (My) Documents and right-click on the
name of any .doc file, and see if it will work.

Are you sure Word2003 is still installed on your computer?

 

[Graham Mayor]

Word 2003 and 2007 share some registry entries - in this case the file
association for Word documents. See
http://www.gmayor.com/Toolbars_in_word_2007.htm which explains how to run
2003 and 2007 together on the same platform whilst preventing them from
reclaiming registry entries for their own use.
If you have difficulty forcing Windows to use the preferred application for
DOC format see http://www.gmayor.com/Document_Not_Found.htm The page
primarily concerns docx format and Word 12 (Word 2007). but the same
principles apply with Word 11 (Word 2003) and the registry keys for doc
format.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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