Office 2007 Beta and Word

Everybody has already told me that I shouldn't have downloaded the Office 2007 Beta software because I am not computer literate enough, so we don't have to start there. (Actually, many years ago I was a Systems Engineer for IBM. Trained in mainframes - MVS, VM, and VSE. Doesn't do me a bit of good with PC's.)

So I have Windows XP SP2 operating system and Office Pro. I downloaded the Office 2007 Beta. I like a lot of its features. But it has changed all of my Word documents to Wordpad. All the formatting is lost. It is NOT a critical issue. I would just like to know if it has happened to anyone else and if there is an easy way to convert them back to Word. Or if maybe I did something along the way to cause it. (I remember those calls from customers, "It was working fine, then all of a sudden it went boom! I didn't change ANYTHING!")

Rebecca

 

Maybe that ghost has fixed this, too! I could have sworn I tried "save as" and changing the file extension to .docx like the new files. It didn't work when I tried it before, but it worked (I think) today. There is even a file now with the extension ".docx.doc) that seems to be opening fine. Why would that happen?

Just for completeness, when I go to "Save As" in the WordPad document, I get a box with:

File name "filename.doc" There is a drop down arrow, but nothing there.

Save as Type "Rich Text Format (RTF)"
And dropping down are the choices: "Text Document"
"Text Document - MS-DOS Format"
"Unicode Text Document"

I don't use Wordpad, so I don't know nothin' about it.

I'm going home. If I have a reversal, I'll let you know in the morning!

Rebecca

 

Just by chance, have you restarted your pc since doing all this?

 

Yep, just decided to print an envelope after I had shut down for the day. Started back up, and it appears that I am wrong again! I pulled up the envelope and it was in WordPad. I tried "Save As" and changed it to .docx extension. It saved it, but it was still in Wordpad and not formatted for an envelope. Hang on, I may have had a brain sprinkle! (Not quite a brain storm.) I am going to try to go to Word FIRST. Then open the document. This time I went to the document and opened it, then tried to "save as." Be right back!

Rebecca

 

Back again! That worked. It seems obvious now. Why wasn't it obvious the other day?

As long as I am going for completeness, here is what worked:

Start Word 2007 Beta 2. Open document that used to be a Word document but has mysteriously morphed into a Wordpad document. (What the heck is Wordpad used for?) Save as .docx if you want it in that format. There was also a choice to save it as Word 97-2003 document, but that seems like a step backwards.

Rebecca

 

Rebecca,

Actually, I quite like this 2007 beta, although most of my friends don't. The "docx.doc" business is due to 2007 calling its own files ".docx" for some mug reason. You can "save as" and then select Windows 2003 format, I find, but so far I haven't found a way to insist 2007 does it automatically.

I never got any Wordpad formats, though.

 

I wonder why all my Word files changed to Wordpad? Must be something different in my PC. It would be interesting to know.

Rebecca

 

Nope it only changes the one I open. But thanks for the reminder to "always open with." That will save me some frustration!

Now I have another problem. It is one I asked about before and I thought it was fixed but it has popped up again. So I guess I'll see you again, unless I can find the old thread and it works again. I think it was back in February, so I'll search for it before asking the same thing again. My RW-CD won't write. It shows up everywhere as RW, but when I put a blank CD in it, it suddenly changes to read only. Makes backups hard! Sigh!

Rebecca