Opening .txt and .rtf Files in Word 2004

[Kathy Hansen]

Ever since I got Word 2004 for mac, I
have not been able to open .txt or .rtf
files with Word. I was always able to with previous
versions. I'm probably missing something
very simple. Any clues?

 

[Sam Elowitch]

Kathy,

It's all about the mappings of your extensions to applications. You have two
options: 1) option-click the file and select "Open With ..." and pick Word
in the resulting submenu; or 2) do a Get Info on one such file, tell it to
Open With MS Word (right beneath Name & Extension), and make it so for all
like files (by clicking Change All). That should do it.

-Sam

 

[Guest]

You're my hero! Thanks. Still don't understand why it only
happened with the newest version of Word, but
as long as I now know how to deal with it, that's cool.
Thanks again.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Kathy,

It's all about the mappings of your extensions to applications. You have two
options: 1) option-click the file and select "Open With ..." and pick Word
in the resulting submenu; or 2) do a Get Info on one such file, tell it to
Open With MS Word (right beneath Name & Extension), and make it so for all
like files (by clicking Change All). That should do it.

-Sam

To which good advice may I add..
If you are using Word's open dialog, make sure that at the very top of
the dialog box, you have the 'enable' set to "all readable documents"

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

To which good advice may I add..
If you are using Word's open dialog, make sure that at the very top of
the dialog box, you have the 'enable' set to "all readable documents"

And that will work even if the file association (icons) are still set to
other applications.

Quite frankly, you should _not_ set ordinary .txt files' file association -
their icons - (i.e. open by double-clicking them) - to MS Word. They should
be normally be left to open in TextEdit. .rtf is up to you I guess.

Plain .txt documents - for example ReadMes that come with many applications
- tab text files that may need to be opened in 3rd-party apps like FileMaker
Pro, etc. should normally have the default application (TextEdit) as owner.

As Elliott says, you can always open them in Word via File/Open, as long as
you set the popup to "All Readable Documents". They do not need to be
Word-owned documents to open in Word.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.