There is absolutely nothing to be gained from changing a file extension:
Word (as with most applications) will know that the document being
opened is
not a Word Doc. Word will read the header data to determine which format
it
is and use the appropriate converter (if installed) to convert it into
Word
format. The extension is there for us rather than the application.

To add to what Terry has said, the extension is also there for Windows. If
you open a Word document from within Word, the cow will know her own calf.
But Windows requires registered file extensions to know what program to use
to open a file. Word by default "owns" the .doc and .dot extensions and can
also be configured to claim .htm, .rtf, and others. But unless you have
associated Word with, say, .wpd, you can't double-click on a WordPerfect
file in Windows Explorer and expect Word to open it. I haven't experimented
with whether you *can* associate Word with .wpd or whether you can rename a
..wpd file to .doc and open it in Word this way, though I would expect both
to be true. Even so, once Word has opened it, it will still know that the
file is not a native Word document.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Michael R" wrote in message
...
Thanks very much Terry. that was very informative




TF wrote:
Word has to create temp files in the active folder whenever it opens or
saves a document. The size of the temp files vary with the complexity of
the
document. Opening or saving from a floppy is bad for two reasons: Word
is
trying to both read and write from a media that was introduced eons ago
(pre-1980s) and is desperately slow and not made for simultaneous
read/write
activities; Word also has no idea if there is sufficient room on the
floppy
and will overwrite other data if there isn't.

There is absolutely nothing to be gained from changing a file extension:
Word (as with most applications) will know that the document being
opened is
not a Word Doc. Word will read the header data to determine which format
it
is and use the appropriate converter (if installed) to convert it into
Word
format. The extension is there for us rather than the application.