Trying to open old 1992 Word file using Office 2007 software

[Registry Novice]

Trying to open a Word file saved in 1992 using recent software, MS Word 2007,
I get the following error message:
“This error occurs if you try to open a Microsoft Office document and the
file type for that document has been blocked by a registry policy setting. To
help secure your computer, Microsoft or the administrator of this computer
implemented a registry policy setting that prevents opening this type of file.
“To open documents with this file type, disable the registry policy setting.
For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 922850.â€

Reading the article and attempting to modify the registry per “Method 2:
Disable the restriction on opening documents of certain types†(..running
Windows XP SP3), I’m supposed to modify the “DWORD†value at the following
path.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Security\FileOpenBlock

However, the path does not exist eyond
“HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoftâ€
What do I do? Thanks for any advice you can provide.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

What the article doesn't tell you is that you have to create the key. See
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922849, which does explain this. Also,
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938810 offers a downloadable Registry
update. Although this refers to Office 2003, it may work for Office 2007 as
well.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Graham Mayor]

If you are uncomfortable editing the registry copy the three lines between
the asterisks to notepad and save with a suitable name with the reg
extension e.g. update.reg

*********

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Security]
"FileOpenBlock"="0"

***********

Right click the resulting file in Windows Explorer and select Merge.
The required change will be made to the registry.
Restart Word.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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