Help

Hello, I am new in here and hope somebody can point me in the right direction. I have just stepped up from Vista to Windows 7. I put My Documents onto a memory stick and transferred to Documents on the new computer. But everything on Microsoft Word and Excel will no open. It tells me to choose a program, can somebody tell me in Kindergarten language how to get around this problem. I have a reasonable grasp of computers for a 71 year old but am far away from being an expert.

Welcome jvsimo1 -

First question is do you have Word and Excel installed? If you have a fresh Windows 7 installation, you will need to install Word / Excel (or Office suite) and the installer will associate the file types to the applications.

If you don't have Word / Excel or the Office suite, you can download and install either LibreOffice or OpenOffice for Windows - either will open / edit / save MS Office files.

Regards,
GEWB

Thanks for the tip GEWB, I downloaded LibreOffice which opens the Microsoft Word files but puts a line through every sentence, what have I done wrong?

jvsimo1 said:

Hello, I am new in here and hope somebody can point me in the right direction. I have just stepped up from Vista to Windows 7. I put My Documents onto a memory stick and transferred to Documents on the new computer. But everything on Microsoft Word and Excel will no open. It tells me to choose a program, can somebody tell me in Kindergarten language how to get around this problem. I have a reasonable grasp of computers for a 71 year old but am far away from being an expert.

Plain and simple - In order to view your Microsoft Office documents (Microsoft Word and Excel) you'll need to install Microsoft Office on Windows 7.

I know nothing about LibreOffice so I can't help you there.

Microsoft also has a viewer for both Word and Excel. Just Google each and it tell you how go get them.

mitchell65 said:

huffman said:

Microsoft also has a viewer for both Word and Excel. Just Google each and it tell you how go get them.

But with those you can only view the files, no editing or saving.
I would uninstall LibreOffice and download and install Open Office for Windows. It is so like MS Office that after a little while you will not see the difference.
The download link is here:
OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org Downloads

Hmmmm, it's interesting that you say that, John, because I was under the impression that LibreOffice does allow editing and saving of the Word docs. Take a look at this ZDNet review that says: "where OpenOffice.org allowed the reading of MS Office 2007 and 2010 documents only, we [LibreOffice] allow their editing and saving under the same format." Here's a link to the whole review: LibreOffice: Ready for Liftoff | ZDNet. What do you think the actual facts are?

mitchell65 said:

Hi Sue, I am surprised and indeed delighted, never thought the day would come when I would be able to suggest to a member of your profession that perhaps re-reading the post might help!
In the post above huffman said:

Microsoft also has a viewer for both Word and Excel. Just Google each and it tell you how go get them.

To which I replied:

But with those you can only view the files, no editing or saving.

I was referring to the MS Viewers not the other 3rd party software

I then went on to suggest that IMHO Open Office was a better option that LibreOffice. What you quote in ZDNet is perfectly correct but if the OP opens a Word Doc , editd and saves it, he will be able to open it again in Open Office!

No problem John. I'm always looking for the real facts and have no problem (unlike many others in my profession ) being corrected, or led to a better solution. In this case, I just didn't want the OP to uninstall an app that might actually solve his problem.