word documents on the desktop don't open when you click on them.

[yasudab]

I have office x w/ the latest 10.1.5 updates on jaguar. There are some
word documents on the desktop. whenever i click on them, word does not
open the file. THe only way I can open them is if I open up the word
program first, then go to file, open and navigate to the file and open
it. Is there a way to fix this? I have already rebuilt permissions,
but what else can be done?

A couple of people have suggested this: Click once on one of these
files on your desktop to highlight it without opening. Hit Command-I
to Get Info on it. Go to the "Open with:" section and change the
application to Word.

If you wish, you may also click the "Change All..." button to change
all documents of this type to open with Word.


THis only works for about an hour. After that, documents won't open
after you click on them. This is happening to over 5 users, so its
not a workstation problem, but I am sure someone else out there is
having this same problem. What is the fix out there?

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Yasudab,

I'm not aware of anyone for whom the "Change All..." fix doesn't stick.
That's a new one. My best suggestion is to do another "Change All..." and
then try all the standard troubleshooting procedures:

1) Quit Word and navigate to your Normal template which should be in
/Applications/Microsoft Office X/Templates/. Rename Normal to something else
(like OldNormal), then relaunch Word. If this fixes the problem but you
have customizations, etc, in OldNormal that you want to maintain, you can
use Organizer to transfer those from OldNormal to the newly-created Normal
template. Then you can trash the old renamed file. To learn how to use
Organizer, see here (use IE not Safari to view this site):
<http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/WordMac/MacWordNormalTemplate.htm>

If this doesn't fix the problem, quit Word again, trash the new Normal and
rename OldNormal back to Normal.

2) To test your Preference files, quit *all* Office Applications.
Navigate to your ~/library/preferences/Microsoft folder. Rename the
Microsoft Component Preferences, Word Settings (10), and Microsoft Office
Settings (10) files. When you restart Word, these files will be recreated.
If all is well, you can trash the old files. You will have to reset some
Preferences and AutoCorrect settings.

If this doesn't help, you can trash the new files and rename the old ones
back.

3) Repair permissions ­ again.

If nothing here helps, I guess I would recommend trying an
uninstall/reinstall. If it comes to that, post back for the procedure.

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>