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You receive an error when trying to open a .docx file in Word 2003 or with the Word Viewer

Article ID: 2001377 - View products that this article applies to.

Symptoms

When trying to open a .DOCX file in Word 2003 with the Compatibility Pack or in the Word Viewer with the Compatibility Pack, you receive the following error message:

“there was an error opening the file.”

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Cause

This issue may be caused by the OLE32.dll file not being registered correctly.

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Resolution

To Try to resolve this issue, follow the steps below:

Close any applications that are running.
Open an elevated command prompt. To do this, click Start , click All Programs , click Accessories , right-click Command Prompt , and then click Run as administrator . If you are prompted for an administrator password or for a confirmation, type the password, or click Allow .
Type the following:
regsvr32 %SystemRoot%\system32\ole32.dll and then click OK.
When you receive the message "DllRegisterServer in ole32.dll succeeded.", click OK:
.

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for other considerations.

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