Word 2007 - Saves as a Word Pad file

[Paul Heckmann]

Strangest thing - when I open a new Word doc and save it (double checked a
minute ago) as a "Word Document", it saves it as Word Pad. Any thoughts,
experience with this?

 

[Terry Farrell]

Try reregistering Word. From Start, Run, type in

winword /r

and press enter. That will correct the association in Windows.

 

[Paul Heckmann]

Thanks Terry. The problem that I see now is that Run no longer shows up in
Vista. I can go to a command prompt in Accessories, but cannot find Run. Any
suggestions?

 

[Paul Heckmann]

My bad. RUN is under Accessories now too in Vista.

 

[Paul Heckmann]

Unfortunately that didn't work Terry. Tried several times, rebooted, no go.

 

[Terry Farrell]

In that case, run the Office Diagnostics tool.

Note in Vista: when you click on the Start button, the cursor is already in
the FIND box. Just type Run and it should show up almost instantly. The
Search is one of Vistas greatest improvements. You can virtually any
application by typing its simple name such as 'run' or 'word': it's not just
for finding music!

Terry

 

[Paul Heckmann]

Thanks for the Vista note.

Ran Office Diag - it came up with one error - here's the fix:

Double-click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Double-click SOFTWARE.
Double-click Microsoft.
Double-click Windows NT.
Double-click CurrentVersion.
Double-click the Drivers32 folder.
Right-click the msacm.voxacm16 file, and then click Rename. Change the file
name to no.msacm.voxacm16.

Unfortunately there is no such file in Dr32. Is there suspossed to be?

 

[Terry Farrell]

Paul

That is resolving an issue with the Vox Audio Codec which actually stops
Word or Outlook from opening: I doubt this has any bearing on your
(relatively) minor problem: a real red herring!

Try this solution: Open Windows Explorer and find a Word .docx document.
Right-click on it and select Open With. In the Open With dialog, make sure
that the check box at the bottom (always use this program) is checked and
then choose Microsoft Word.

The document should now open with Word.

Terry

 

[Paul Heckmann]

Tried that. Didn't work. The document opens fine, but always saves as a Word
Pad file even though it says Word Document. I can save it as 2003, but it
kind of defeats the purpose of having Office 2007.

 

[Terry Farrell]

Paul

Let me get this clear...

Word 2007 will saveas Word 2003, HTM and all the other possibilities, but
when you save it as native Word 2007 format it saves as WordPad?

How do you know that it is WordPad?

Terry

 

[tomaskamartin]

Dear Paul and Terry,
I think that problem is: When you save a document in Word 2007 in a "doc"
format - you alsways obtain file with a WordPad icon, is not it? I have the
same problem on W XP MCE. When I associated such file with Word it was open
correctly with Word, but its icon remains as a WordPad file. Now I will try
your advice to run winword /r.
Regards
Martin

 

[Paul Heckmann]

Exactly what happens Martin. When you click on the icon, it opens it with
gibberish in Word Pad. The properties show that it is saved as a "DOCX File
(.docx)", but "opens with Word Pad" any time I save it as a "Word document"
which is the default setting.

 

[tomaskamartin]

Hi, it looks a bit different. In fact I have problem only with icon of the
file (DOC format) - the file looks like WordPad document, but it is
associated (correctly) with Word 2007. I am only missing Word-file icon in
DOC files. In DOCX it works correctly.
Regards
Martin

 

[Terry Farrell]

If you right-click a *.docx file and choose Open With, Microsoft Word 2007
does it open correctly in Word 2007?

Terry

 

[Paul Heckmann]

It asks "Microsoft Office Word" or "Word Pad" - but it asks one more thing
that is so obvious that I went right by it: "Change default program". Once I
changed that, everything is now hunky-dory.

Thanks for your assistance!