Office 2004 file ownership

[aRKay]

I have run into a problem with Word for Mac v11.3.8 since upgrading to
Leopard. For reasons I do not understand my old Mac Word files are no
longer owned (or open with) Word for Mac. If I double click on an .doc
file that was created prior to Leopard, they want to open with "WordPad
MFC Application.app." When the iMac hangs up looking for the weird app,
I have been going to the file (Cmd-I) and manually changing the file to
Word for Mac.

I finally figured out there is a "Change All" option and I hope this
ditches the dumb WordPad MFC Application.

I have no idea how the WordPad or whatever became the opening preference
and I hope the Change All command works.

aRKay

 

[CyberTaz]

Yeah, I've seen a few reports of this although I'm still using Tiger. I
don't know who's to blame for it, but WordPad/WordPad MFC (Microsoft
Foundation Classes) is a utility-level word processing program freely
distributed with the Windows OS. On a PC Word will open those files but
since the app isn't registered in Mac-Land Mac Word doesn't get notified
when you double-click one - I'm not sure if File> Open from within Word will
do it or not.

Can't help but wonder if maybe Apple did that on purpose just to agitate
Office users - they do have a bunch of Pages to unload, ya know;-)

 

[aRKay]

Bob Jones,

After reading your comment, I put the spotlight on Word Pad and found it
under Parallels where XP Pro was installed. Something tells me the XP
Pro installer may have been the application that change all of my Word
documents.

User/Documents/Parallels/Microsoft Windows XP/Windows
Applications/WordPad MFC Application.app

Thanks for the comments

arkay

 

[CyberTaz]

Now that's an interesting development - I can see how it could happen if
you're working through Parallels/Windows & opening docs from a Mac volume.
It doesn't make sense that the Parallels installer would arbitrarily do that
though. Can't go much further as far as testing since I'm still running VPCs
on my G5.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi,

That makes sense because Parallels now treats Windows applications as just
more Mac applications using virtualization.

MacOS uses whatever the most recently installed program that knows how to
deal with a given file format, so if you installed Word Pad after you
installed Mac Office, then Word Pad will be the default application used to
open .doc files.

You are correct that using Get Info and changing the default program back to
Microsoft Word for Mac will fix the problem.

-Jim

Bob Jones,

After reading your comment, I put the spotlight on Word Pad and found it
under Parallels where XP Pro was installed. Something tells me the XP
Pro installer may have been the application that change all of my Word
documents.

User/Documents/Parallels/Microsoft Windows XP/Windows
Applications/WordPad MFC Application.app

Thanks for the comments

arkay

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

MVPs are not Microsoft Employees
MVP info

 

[aRKay]

Jim,

Thanks for the note. It was driving me crazy until I figured out what
was wrong. This is the stuff they do not tell you about Parallels.
Maybe I should have used Boot Camp.

 

[CyberTaz]

Glad it's straightened out, but as "odd" as the behavior may seem I'd stay
with Parallels - depending on how you need to work. If your Win activity is
exclusively Win, your Mac activity is strictly Mac & never the twain shall
meet, Boot Camp may be a viable solution for you.

However, I need to be able to swap back & forth between Mac Word & PC Word
to Mac XL, To Mac InDesign to PC Photoshop, etc. so having to restart every
time I need to swap OS is just not practical or acceptable - I'd rather have
a Mac & a PC sitting side-by-side

On a related note, have you looked at VMWare Fusion? It may be worth
considering, but either of the 3 will have pros & cons.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac