Why are Word documents (.doc) being saved as Word Pad documents?

I'm very computer illiterate and hopefully it is a simple question. Over the last few weeks I have been receiving emails with word docments attached and when I save them they are being saved as Word Pad and not MS Word?

Is there any reason why this is happening and can I stop it from happening.

Cheers

Dee

Just to be clear, do you have Word installed on this machine? Are you using Outlook or Outlook Express? Other email?

bartonc-

You don't think it's a default file association?

Looks like default file association to me too, here what can be done, save the file to the desctop and right click on it go to Open With > Choose Program > In the list pick Microsoft Office Word and make sure to check the "Always use the selected program.." now close outlook and restart.

Once you are back on open the old e-mail with the word attachment and try opening it. It should open with Microsoft Word, now when you save it, make sure that in the save as it says "Save as Type" Word Document (*.doc)


That's all, best luck!

Cyber

Looks like default file association to me too, here what can be done, save the file to the desctop and right click on it go to Open With > Choose Program > In the list pick Microsoft Office Word and make sure to check the "Always use the selected program.." now close outlook and restart.

Once you are back on open the old e-mail with the word attachment and try opening it. It should open with Microsoft Word, now when you save it, make sure that in the save as it says "Save as Type" Word Document (*.doc)


That's all, best luck!

Cyber

Thanks! That solves the problem from this point forward but I'm worried that the docs that I emailed to others in the past will open on their machines as Wordpad. I sent out a bunch of resumes with MSWord bullets in the text whose coding gets screwed up in Wordpad. Did the recipients of these docs also open my resume in Notepad in the corrupted form? Or did the docs open correctly in Word depending on how their local file associations were set up? In other words, were all my Word documents set up to open as Wordpad on everyone's system?

Thanks for your help.

Thanks! That solves the problem from this point forward but I'm worried that the docs that I emailed to others in the past will open on their machines as Wordpad. I sent out a bunch of resumes with MSWord bullets in the text whose coding gets screwed up in Wordpad. Did the recipients of these docs also open my resume in Notepad in the corrupted form? Or did the docs open correctly in Word depending on how their local file associations were set up? In other words, were all my Word documents set up to open as Wordpad on everyone's system?

Thanks for your help.

If you used Send from Word's File menu, they were probably sent as .doc files. For that matter, if they have the .doc extention and open correctly now, you are sure to have sent Word documents and they will open in Word on any correctly configured machine.

I suspect there's something else going on with the Word docs turning into WordPad files. All my Word docs and Excel worksheets "forgot" their extensions in the past couple days (Excel yesterday, Word just now). And I have not changed any associations.

As a matter of fact, when I went through Files Types in the Control Panel to re-associate those file types, the extensions (doc and xls) were no longer listed.

I have added a bunch of video editing/compression software lately and just installed a DVD burner, but I haven't made any other changes (of which I am aware).

Just FYI.

I suspect there's something else going on with the Word docs turning into WordPad files. All my Word docs and Excel worksheets "forgot" their extensions in the past couple days (Excel yesterday, Word just now). And I have not changed any associations.

As a matter of fact, when I went through Files Types in the Control Panel to re-associate those file types, the extensions (doc and xls) were no longer listed.

I have added a bunch of video editing/compression software lately and just installed a DVD burner, but I haven't made any other changes (of which I am aware).

Just FYI.

Thanks for the info. Please, let us know if you find out any more details about vanishing associations.

I am having the same problem (all Word .doc files have been changed to Wordpad), and suspect that a virus is causing it. Every time I open up MS Word, a file error causes my Norton antivirus to close. Strange. Has anyone had further experience with this issue?

Thanks
Tommy

MS Word may not be the default.

Right click the file and click open with.
choose ms word and at the bottom check the box which says always use program.

@annski
This is fine for files opened from Windows Explorer.

Within the various versions of Outlook, that option is not always available. Post #4 gives a method for fixing this. Alternatively, saving the file away with a .DOC extension followed by Annski's method from Windows Explorer is a pretty simple and easy way of re-establishing the file association.