WD97: Double-Clicking Document Icon Does Not Open Document

In Windows Explorer, when you double-click the icon for a document created in any one of the following versions of Word any of the following problems may occur:

• The document is opened in another program (the opened document may be unreadable).
  
  -or-
• Another program is started and that program returns an error message because it cannot open the document.
  
  -or-
• Double-clicking the icon doesn't have any effect (the document is not opened).

NOTE: This problem is more likely to occur if the only version of Word on your computer is Word 97 for Windows.

The file is not recognized as a valid Word file. This problem occurs in the following cases.

Case 1: The File Name Extension Is Associated with Another Program

If the file name extension is something other than .doc and it is associated with another program, the file will be recognized as belonging to that program. For example, if you double-click a Word document named Test.txt, Notepad attempts to open the document because the .txt extension is associated with Notepad.

Case 2: The File Name Extension Is Unregistered

To check registered file types and extensions, do the following:

1. On the Windows desktop, double-click the My Computer icon.
2. On the View menu, click Options.
3. Click the File Types tab.

Case 3: The File Does Not Have a File Name Extension

This problem is most likely to occur with files created on the Macintosh.

To work around this problem, use either of the following methods.

Method 1: Open the Document from Within Word

1. On the File menu, click Open.
2. Under Look In, select the drive and then open the folder where your document is located.
3. In the Files Of Type list, select All Files (*.*).
4. Click to select your document, and then click Open.

Method 2: Give the Document a .doc File Name Extension

1. Click Start, point to Programs, and then click Windows Explorer (Windows 95) or Windows NT Explorer (Windows NT 4.0).
2. On the View menu, click Options.
3. Click the View tab.
4. Click to clear the check mark from "Hide MS-DOS file extensions for file types that are registered" (Windows 95) or "Hide file extensions for known file types" (Windows NT 4.0).
5. Click OK.
6. Locate your document. Right-click the document, and then click Rename on the shortcut menu.
7. If the document does not have a file name extension, add .doc to the end of the file name (for example, rename "Mydoc" to "Mydoc.doc"). Otherwise, change the file name extension to .doc (for example, rename Mydoc.abc to Mydoc.doc).
   
   NOTE: The icon changes to a Microsoft Word document icon.
8. Double-click the document icon to open the document.

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.

For more information about opening documents, click the Office Assistant, type "how to open a document," click Search, and then click to view the "Open a document" topic.

NOTE: If the Assistant is hidden, click the Office Assistant button on the Standard toolbar. If Microsoft Word Help is not installed on your computer, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: