Reading Scanned Documents

Hi there:
I had someone scan and email me some documents. When I open them, its all gobbledegook. How do I make it legible?
He sent the attachment as a Wordpad and it is a .doc file.
I have Word perfect on my computer. My computer is running Windows XP home.
Thanks

 

Ive never used WordPerfect so I'm not sure how it works with .doc files. Usually .doc files require Microsoft Word.

 

Actually I've never used it either...It came with the computer when I bought it.
I tried to open Wordperfect, and it asked it to convert the file. it comes up with an unsupported format.
Am I even on the right track? The documents were scanned, and they have signatures on them, should I be trying to open them with some other program than a word processor?

 

Thanks Star17, I downloaded Abiword, but it wouldn't open the saved attachment.
When I look at the attachment, it says it is a wordpad document.
What have I done?