Help .. any Windows Vista users..?

[seasprout]

I'm in a mess here can anybody help me a bit...??

My new PC has Vista windows and it uses Wordpad not Word as its primary word processing programme, and being not very good with these things when I download a document off the web, ie a newsletter, the document arrives compleatly in some sort of code and how ever I try I cannot open it in a usefull programme to read it, My PC has word loaded but I cannot get documents in it to read them.


Does anybody have an 8 year old handy who knows how to do these things..?
I have a big fat manual called Vista for dummies, even I'm too thick to understand it.

[TEB]

if its not personal you can pm the document to me
PS instead of emailing it can you tell me what the file extension is i.e. the bit after the dot

[seasprout]

Can i Pm the page the link is on to you, its a schedule for a produce show...

hope I dont mess that up..

[TEB]

sure fire away

[seasprout]

Where did that post from madderbat go..?

[TEB]

dunno havent seen it but I have replied to your pm with the answer - hope it helps

[madderbat]

My new PC has Vista windows and it uses Wordpad not Word as its primary word processing programme, and being not very good with these things when I download a document off the web, ie a newsletter, the document arrives compleatly in some sort of code and how ever I try I cannot open it in a usefull programme to read it, My PC has word loaded but I cannot get documents in it to read them.

Not quite an eight-year-old, but the 21-year-old son of Madderbat - let's see if I can help.

Do all .doc files on your PC also load with WordPad when you open them? If so, I know what the problem is, but I have no experience with Vista (wouldn't touch it with a bargepole, myself), so I can't absolutely guarantee that this will apply to your PC. If that's not the case, then this may well not work - I'd probably have to be there in person to help further.

Try the following:

• Open My Computer
• Click Tools, then Folder Options;
• click the File Types tab at the top of the window that pops up;
• scroll down the "Registered file types" list until you see "DOC" under Extensions, and click it once to select (and thus highlight) it.
• You should now see an information panel that says something along the lines of "Details for 'DOC' extension".
• Next to "Opens with:" should be the program that Windows will use to open .doc file. If this is already set to use Word, then I'm stumped!
• Click "Change...", and see if Word is in the list that the new pop-up display. If it is, click it one to select it, tick "Always use the selected program [...]", and click OK - all done. If it's not listed, read on...
• Click "Browse...", and navigate to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office", or the equivalent for Office 2004/2007 - whichever you have. Look in there for "WINWORD.EXE", and if it's there, click it once, click "Open", then as above, tick the box and click OK.

If that doesn't work, post back here, and I'll see if I can help further.

~Paul

[TEB]

its a pdf doc

Ps Office 2007 has a new file type now called docx which is not compatible with earlier version - you have to make sure you do a save as and save back to doc

[madderbat]

If the document is a .pdf, Paul says you can install Adobe Reader from Adobe.com and load it with that.

Hope that helps

[seasprout]

Thankyou Paul/jane i'm going to print that and try it... currently downloading somthing TEB has recomended, however I have discovered a flaw in my plan by not yet being on broadband, still on dial up, so its taking an age.

[rustylady]

PDF's open with Adobe, which is a free download. However, I've heard bad things about Vista - i.e. it isn't compatible with existing programmes. I would agree with Madderbat, don't go for new operating systems till Microsoft have got all the problems ironed out (takes forever). Using XP at the mo, and perfectly happy with that.

[seasprout]

Hump..

Not much help that really. Old PC blew up, litterally, went out and bought a new one, was told vista is the new operating system. And that it works with everything.

Dont know much about computers, but the salesman appeared to. So what are you supposed to do..?

Thanks for the help everybody, still working through it.

[TEB]

PDF's open with Adobe, which is a free download. However, I've heard bad things about Vista - i.e. it isn't compatible with existing programmes. I would agree with Madderbat, don't go for new operating systems till Microsoft have got all the problems ironed out (takes forever). Using XP at the mo, and perfectly happy with that.

A lot of the problem is that the vendors of various products haven't updated their drivers so if you are thinking of upgrading to Vista with your existing computer I would forget about it until the vendors have pulled their fingers out and upgraded their drivers and SP1 for Vista is released. I was on the Microsoft MVP pre release (sort of Alpha +) and Beta release of Vista and Office 2007 and only experienced problems with (once it got to Beta 2 refresh) software and hardware with the reasons listed above. Saying that we are warning users of purchasing new computers with Vista and power users of Office 2007. Unfortunately its is getting difficult for the domestic user to purchase Win XP and earlier versions of Office.

PS there were over 10,000 users on the beta of both programs which rose to at least a 100,000 once it got Beta 2 refresh, unfortunately its marketing that calls a lot of the shots in Redmond

[TEB]

Hi LJ,
You might want to post your issues on the Microsoft Newsgroups, these are managed by Microsoft (and sometimes manned) but in general its ordinary users and Microsoft MVP's, here is a starting place http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/com...s/default.mspx

[Peter]

Hope you realise that a pdf document is NOT editable.

Acrobat is a really neat way of producing nice neat unalterable documents for web sites.