The problem is not with Word but with Windows Explorer (which maintains the
table of file extensions and the associated icons and applications). You can
fix it manually by opening Windows Explorer and going to Tools Folder
Options File Types. Check the Word-related file extensions (doc, dot,
docx, doch, etc) and correct the associated details in each case.

Or, more simply, go to Start Run and enter: winword.exe /r

This re-registers Word.





"Mark Richardson" Mark wrote in
message ...
All of a sudden MS Word started saving all my documents not as Word
documents
but as Wordpad documents. The icon attached to the documents on my
desktop,
in the Open File menu within Word, and in Windows Explorer are all Wordpad
icons, not Word icons. And when I double click a document originally
created
in Word, now it opens it as a Wordpad dpcument in Wordpad. I CAN open the
documents from within Word and threy seem to work as Word documents, but
Word
saves them as Wordpad files. Very irritating.

What can I do? What happened? I am using MS Word 2003.

Mark Richardson