Vista and .DOC files

Bungarm2001

Hi
Hope this is the right place for this question, if not please feel free to remove.

My mother-in-law (in her 70's) who is a TOTAL novice with computers recently bought her first one and is slowly getting to grips with all the basic stuff with a lot of help from us.

Her 'puter is running Vista which is totally new to me since I am still happily running XP on mine. She has managed to download a .doc file and save it to the desktop, but can't actually open it to read it. I am trying to help, but as we live hundreds of miles away, it isn't possible just to pop in and twiddle with or serach her operating system for an answer.

Is it something to do with Vista? Where XP simply opens a .doc file in Wordpad, even the cut down version that comes with XP, Vista doesn't seem to do this? Does Vista come with Wordpad or something similar? If so, how can we get .doc files associated with it so they automatically open up in the right programme when she dble clicks on a file? (there doesn't seem to be a way to do this easily like XP where you opposite click a file etc etc andeventually get the drop down list of programmes or apps to associate with each type of file..)

The files were created in Word 2003 (I think..it's very hard to get this info out of a total computer novice of a certain age and over the phone..!) so does this mean that she will need to buy Microsofts Office to get the right programme?

Anyway, hope all that makes sense. AOL is her ISP by the way, and she does also seem to have trouble opening Internet Explorer. PDF files are problematical too, even tho I know she has Adobe reader on her system.

ANY help would be hugely appreciated while I still have some hair left!

gaming_guy

download openoffice for free. it should open all the MS office files fine and allow you to edit them

totalsolutions

Download the free Word viewer from MS if you want to. Note that Wordpad and Notepad are installed in my Vista (Ultimate)

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Write click the .doc file and find "open with" select either notepad or wordpad.

Bungarm2001

totalsolutions wrote: »

Download the free Word viewer from MS if you want to. Note that Wordpad and Notepad are installed in my Vista (Ultimate)

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Write click the .doc file and find "open with" select either notepad or wordpad.

Here's another question..apparently, Wordpad does come along with Vista. I found this out by trawling the Web...but the "open with" drop down list apparently doesn't have it in there. Notepad is, but no Wordpad. Could it be that this is actually missing off her computer??

It's soooooooo frustrating..if I was there I could probably solve this with a few clicks.

Thanks gaming-guy for the tip about Open Office. Not sure that she is at the stage where she can download and supervise an installation yet. She would panic if anything went wrong during installation, and probably switch everyting off! I will bear it in mind for the future tho.

M4RKM

Bungarm2001, maybe it would be worthwhile installing VNC onto your MIL's laptop, then you could control her computer from miles away, and look at problems. It always is easier to use the computer that has the problem on rather than attempt to sort it out with not seeing the screen...

M

[Deleted User]

Wordpad doesn't open .doc files so she will have to install either the viewer or open office as mentioned above

totalsolutions

Wordpad did indeed open a dummy file called test.doc, no problem

[Deleted User]

totalsolutions wrote: »

Wordpad did indeed open a dummy file called test.doc, no problem

Did the dummy file have any text in it, because I've tried a few .doc files and it cannot display them correctly.

totalsolutions

er, No, but it opened it. Thought you might come back with that.....

Bungarm2001

VNC sounds good! Would there be any conflicts with XP and Vista and/or firewalls etc? How can I get VNC?

Cheers for all the replies so far!

fwor

I suspect that VNC may be inherently more secure than the M$ equivalent, but why not just use the Remote Desktop and Remote Assistant already built into XP and Vista? (Control Panel, System, Remote).

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/398b5eda-aa7f-4078-94c5-1519b697bfa01033.mspx

The article above suggests a few compatibility issues, but they don't seem to apply to you, and if it works you wouldn't have to install any additional software.