I use mostly Firefox, but also IE11 on occasion. I use Fastmail for my email service. I received an email from a trusted source which includes a ".doc" attachment. Windows won't open it. Can I add .doc as a legitimate extension so that I can open the attachments? If so, how? In 2nd-grade steps, please!
.doc is an extension name for MS Office Word 2003 and below. The Only thing you need to see on your computer is if you have an installed Microsoft Office Applications. .doc extension can be read by later version of MS Office.
As mentioned above the .DOC file has been downloaded so you would go to your incoming directory (I use Agent).
Find the file and rename it you will get an alert that's meant be be ignored. If it wouldn't load as a DOC file just drop it into your text editor the header will (should) show what type of file it is. just that key word (type of file) is what you would look for.
If you see a MZ it's an executable file and of no use just delete it.
If u don't have Office, wordpad will read it but not formatted as it was meant to be.
Last edited by Trax; 22 Feb 2015 at 03:36. Reason: WordPad usage second edit MZ
Oops. I don't have Word. I use Open Office. Is there no hope?
Open Office is mostly compatible with the real MS Office and can open and modify most of its files. Just opening it will do, and if there is ever an incompatibility Open Office Writter would complain then.
If not, open writter yourself, and open the file manually within it.
However, take a bit of caution. I have some suspects that it might be a virus trying to disguise as a Word document, a very frequent tactic used by the most basic viruses. Having the .doc extension and a properly installed Office suite should open the file easily, but failure to do is a warning to me. Double check if the file is something.doc.exe, and remember that Windows by default hides that, creating this sort of security problems.
Get the free Word Viewer from Microsoft. Then you can read .doc and .docx documents.
Download Word Viewer from Official Microsoft Download Center
You can right click your downloaded file. Open with. then choose OpenOffice Writer.
That should open it. Else. You can try WHS suggested.
Well, right-clicking didn't open anything I could use.As far as being suspicious of the email, I'm not. I know the person and I know he's light-years ahead of me with technology. However, I've never seen document icons like this one: It's a lower-case, light blue "a." I'm not offered a "view" option with it. Just "download." So I think now I'll try the Word Viewer download.
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I got this attached message after I downloaded the reader.
The last post shows you trying to open it with Windows Media Player, which obviously can't handle the file, but at least it shows it's legitimaly a .doc, so forget my supposition about viruses.
Most likely it's just a matter of file associations.
But for open the file, download it somewhere, to the desktop for example. Open Writter yourself with the start menu, then click file menu then open, then browse to the desktop and choose the file you just downloaded, this should do it.
Check your file type association settings. Control Panel > Default Programs > Associate a file type or protocol with a program.
Scroll down the list and find .doc and .docx and check that they're set to open with Open Office Writer.
If that's not the case click on "Change Program" and browse to OpenOffice swriter.exe
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