Help me change my default reader Word, instead of OpenOffice, please.

Factual Questions
1

I had OO for my office needs, but then I found that I would have to use Windows Office, for special needs. I bought (grrrr) WO and installed it, and it is working splendidly. Except. When I have open an older document, which had been saved in W97/XP format, and when I open a newer downloaded document, it opens in OO. I thought that when you installed a new software, it sort of automatically changed the defaults to its own settings. I need my docs, etc, to open in Windows, and it’s not even trying!
Can anybody help me make Windows Office my default reader? I also want to delete OO without having to copy and paste all of my OO documents into Windows.
Thank You,
Greatshakes

2

Where are your documents stored? If you keep them all in My Documents, you can safely get rid of OO without losing any documents - there’s no need to copy and paste them across.

You can also get WO to open your documents without getting rid of OO at all; which version of WO do you have?

3

I have 2007.

Thank You,
Greatshakes

4

I have 2007.

Thank You,
Greatshakes

5

The easiest way to do this would be to do the following:

  1. Find a file that opens with OO, say in My Documents
  2. Right-click the file and go down to Open With… and then across to Choose Program
  3. In the box that comes up, choose Microsoft Office Word (or Excel, as appropriate) and then make sure you check the ‘Always use the selected program to open this kind of file’
  4. Click OK

All files of that type should now open with WO. You’ll need to repeat this process for each type of file, unfortunately (documents and spreadsheets are the most common, which means doing it twice).

Check it out and see if it works!

6

That did it!
Thank You,
greatshakes