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Help, I'm totally dense about this kinda thing

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Hope someone can help me, I can mostly work my way around computers but I'm drawing a blank at this. anyway, on my laptop, it has vista and microsoft works. i use works word processor but a lot of the time when i go to download documents, it takes me into works task launcher, saying works could not open the file, it may be corrupted. which is highly unlikely as it does this with the majority of stuff i try to open/download.

tried to open a document there and the same thing happened. it ended in .doc, is this where my problem is? do i need to download office or something?? god i feel like like a right plum, can anyone help me??

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Ahh... the Works vs Word dilemma rears its ugly head once more. I've encountered the problem myself and so had a few of my customers.

    Works and Word are two separate word processors made by the same company. Why the hell they did this is past me, but M$ should have thought better than keeping them incompatible with one another.

    Here is what you need - the Works/Word converter. Carry on using Works if you like and use the converter. The more expensive option is of course to buy the M$ Office suite.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I think you would be better off with Microsoft Office personally, it's fairly cheap if you're a student and if you're not, well you can always get the naughty version.

    OpenOffice is a free alternative, it's got most of the functionality of Microsoft Office but isn't quite as polished, but it is completely 100% free to use and works well with .doc format files.

    http://www.openoffice.org/

    Microsoft Works isn't very good if I'm honest, it's fairly old and largely discontinued these days. It tends to be bundled free with new PCs because Microsoft sells it to OEMs for next to nothing, and then the OEM can say it's got "Microsoft Works Word Processer" which people think is Microsoft Office. I expect the reason it's throwing a wobbly for the time being is because you're trying to open the file with a launcher? Have you tried opening Microsoft Works writer thingy and then from within that opening the file?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    ShyBoy wrote: »
    OpenOffice is a free alternative, it's got most of the functionality of Microsoft Office but isn't quite as polished, but it is completely 100% free to use and works well with .doc format files.

    http://www.openoffice.org/

    This. It's certainly a lot better than the misery that is MS Works... or at least it was the last time I used it. :)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    ta muchly folks, just downloaded it :)
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