[Mary]

A friend sends us word documents that arrive with a "_doc" extension, and
Word 2007 Home edition won't open it unless we manually change the extension
to ".doc."
Windows Vista seemingly won't allow me to name Word as the program to open
"_doc" files.
Thanks for any suggestions.

[JoAnn Paules]

Sounds like your friend is doing something funky and changing the extension.

--
JoAnn Paules
MVP Microsoft [Publisher]
Tech Editor for "Microsoft Publisher 2007 For Dummies"



"Mary" wrote in message
...
A friend sends us word documents that arrive with a "_doc" extension, and
Word 2007 Home edition won't open it unless we manually change the
extension
to ".doc."
Windows Vista seemingly won't allow me to name Word as the program to open
"_doc" files.
Thanks for any suggestions.

[Jay Freedman]

On Sat, 3 Oct 2009 14:28:01 -0700, Mary
wrote:

A friend sends us word documents that arrive with a "_doc" extension, and
Word 2007 Home edition won't open it unless we manually change the extension
to ".doc."
Windows Vista seemingly won't allow me to name Word as the program to open
"_doc" files.
Thanks for any suggestions.

Anything starting with an underscore is NOT an extension. By
definition, an extension starts with a dot, never an underscore.
That's why Windows won't let you assign a program to open a "_doc"
extension -- because that cannot be an extension.

Your friend may be renaming the files on his end because his email
application, whatever it is, objects to documents as attachments. If
so, he's doing you no favors. Ask him to zip the documents instead.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit.

[Graham Mayor]

Frankly I would be very suspicious of any attachment that ended in _doc as
this is clearly not the extension but part of the file name. You must set
Windows Vista to display the extensions of known file types, so that you
know what you are dealing with. It may well be that the true filename is
filename_doc.doc or filename_doc.docx. You may then need to re-associate
Word 2007 with the particular file type.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org



Mary wrote:
A friend sends us word documents that arrive with a "_doc" extension,
and Word 2007 Home edition won't open it unless we manually change
the extension to ".doc."
Windows Vista seemingly won't allow me to name Word as the program to
open "_doc" files.
Thanks for any suggestions.

[Mary]

I'm sorry I was not precise enough in my language. The "_doc" is an
extension, the files are called "filename._doc."
Another friend has Word 2007 professional and she has no trouble opening
these files!

"Graham Mayor" wrote:

Frankly I would be very suspicious of any attachment that ended in _doc as
this is clearly not the extension but part of the file name. You must set
Windows Vista to display the extensions of known file types, so that you
know what you are dealing with. It may well be that the true filename is
filename_doc.doc or filename_doc.docx. You may then need to re-associate
Word 2007 with the particular file type.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org



Mary wrote:
A friend sends us word documents that arrive with a "_doc" extension,
and Word 2007 Home edition won't open it unless we manually change
the extension to ".doc."
Windows Vista seemingly won't allow me to name Word as the program to
open "_doc" files.
Thanks for any suggestions.

[Graham Mayor]

The next question then is *why* are these documents being sent with this
extension? Tell the sender to desist from this anarchy and name them using
the correct Windows conventions.

If you are convinced that the documents are genuine Word documents then you
should be able to open them from within Word if you first save them to the
hard drive. Word does not only use the extension to determine which are its
native files.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org



Mary wrote:
I'm sorry I was not precise enough in my language. The "_doc" is an
extension, the files are called "filename._doc."
Another friend has Word 2007 professional and she has no trouble
opening these files!

"Graham Mayor" wrote:

Frankly I would be very suspicious of any attachment that ended in
_doc as this is clearly not the extension but part of the file name.
You must set Windows Vista to display the extensions of known file
types, so that you know what you are dealing with. It may well be
that the true filename is filename_doc.doc or filename_doc.docx. You
may then need to re-associate Word 2007 with the particular file
type.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org



Mary wrote:
A friend sends us word documents that arrive with a "_doc"
extension, and Word 2007 Home edition won't open it unless we
manually change the extension to ".doc."
Windows Vista seemingly won't allow me to name Word as the program
to open "_doc" files.
Thanks for any suggestions.

[Mary]

Thanks for the replies.
I am literate but certainly not expert in Word and it was implied that there
was something wrong with me or my computer that I couldn't open these files.
I feel more confident now that this is not normal and I can ask the sender
and other opener about what's going on.

"Graham Mayor" wrote:

The next question then is *why* are these documents being sent with this
extension? Tell the sender to desist from this anarchy and name them using
the correct Windows conventions.

If you are convinced that the documents are genuine Word documents then you
should be able to open them from within Word if you first save them to the
hard drive. Word does not only use the extension to determine which are its
native files.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org



Mary wrote:
I'm sorry I was not precise enough in my language. The "_doc" is an
extension, the files are called "filename._doc."
Another friend has Word 2007 professional and she has no trouble
opening these files!

"Graham Mayor" wrote:

Frankly I would be very suspicious of any attachment that ended in
_doc as this is clearly not the extension but part of the file name.
You must set Windows Vista to display the extensions of known file
types, so that you know what you are dealing with. It may well be
that the true filename is filename_doc.doc or filename_doc.docx. You
may then need to re-associate Word 2007 with the particular file
type.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org



Mary wrote:
A friend sends us word documents that arrive with a "_doc"
extension, and Word 2007 Home edition won't open it unless we
manually change the extension to ".doc."
Windows Vista seemingly won't allow me to name Word as the program
to open "_doc" files.
Thanks for any suggestions.

[Per Lund-Mathiesen, Norway]

I have been troubled with the same problem. When others opened multi-adress
mails with such attachments without problems and I could not find an
explanation on internet I had to start testing on my own. Luckily I have also
found the answer.
When the sender ends his filename with a full stop and the program
automatically adds ".doc", the filename ends up with "..doc".
Earlier versions of Word accept that apparently whereas my Word 2007
converts to the unreadable "._doc" requiring to be saved and renamed before
it is possible to open it.

"Mary" wrote:

A friend sends us word documents that arrive with a "_doc" extension, and
Word 2007 Home edition won't open it unless we manually change the extension
to ".doc."
Windows Vista seemingly won't allow me to name Word as the program to open
"_doc" files.
Thanks for any suggestions.