OK, here’s the deal. I just installed Microsoft Office 2003 Professional (I can’t stand 2007; I steadfastly insist upon using the older version of Word.) The only thing is, when I save Word documents (.DOC) files with Word 2003, I can’t then double-click on the icon for the saved document and have it open right up in Word. Instead, it opens up in fucking Wordpad. I’ve tried every fix; I’ve right clicked on the document and went to the “Open With” menu, to “Choose Default Program.” However, Microsoft Office 2003 or Word 2003 do not appear in the list of programs, and not only that, when I manually use the browse button to go into the Office directory and manually select the WinWord application, it DOESN’T WORK. I’ll click on it, and press OK, but it will keep opening up in Wordpad only.
What is going on here?
How can I permanently associate the .DOC file with Word 2003?
Couple of questions, did you have Word 2007 on first then uninstall it then install Word 2003?
When you do the “open with” thing and don’t see the program usually it means there is some kind of registry error. Either it was installed incorrectly, overlooked or another program blocked it.
You see when you install Word2003 the installation wizard should put an entry in your registry to allow it to be chosen from a list of choices when you do the “Opens with” menu.
If this doesn’t get put in there there’s no choice. I found a few programs I installed with VISTA the program designer didn’t account for the way VISTA does it (which is slightly different from other Windows versions) so that option to choose gets left out.
You have to be extremely careful making any changes to your registry 'cause you can mess up so much, unfortunately I can’t offer you any concrete suggestions.
BTW what is your version of Windows and let others know if you had any other MS office programs installed prior.