It has something to do with an overactive Anti Virus checker somewhere -
probably at your ISP but may be a corporate AV scanner doing this.. Get the
sender to ZIP the file with WinZip or similar utility first. That should
stop the AV from messing with it.

--
Terry Farrell - Word MVP
http://word.mvps.org/

"amber" wrote in message
...
: My friend emailed me a Word file (*.doc file) to me, but the file Ive
saved
: from the attachment in Outlook Express has a .dat extension. I cant seem
to
: open it in wordpad. notepad or Work's wordprocessor, or even with
Wordperfect
: Office 12 (I dont have Word). Is my friend wrong about what he has sent?