Email recipient can’t open Word attachment

Q: I sent a friend of mine an email with a Word document attached and she said she couldn’t open the file. She has Word installed on her computer so why can’t she open my file?

A: This is a very common issue since the new version of Office was released. My guess is that you recently upgraded to Office 2007 or purchased a new computer with the trial version of Office 2007 already installed.

With the new version of Office, Microsoft completely revamped how they store the data that makes up a Word document. While this may be a step in the right direction, it has created incompatibilities with previous versions of Word. That is why you may have noticed that the documents you create in the new version of Word have a .docx extension, rather than the old .doc extension. In the techie world, we would say that the new file format is not backwards compatible with the previous versions of Word.

Because you are pioneering the new version of Office, you will need to be sensitive to others when you attach Word documents to your emails. If you are unsure whether or not the person you are sending a document to has Office 2007 installed, your best bet is to save your document in the previous version’s format. You can do this by using the Save As option rather than the Save option and choosing Word 97-2003 Document as your document type.

One more thing. Technically you don’t need to save your document in the old format. People that receive your documents can choose to install a plug-in that will allow them to view your document. While this option works just fine, many people will shy away from having to install a program just to view an email attachment.

This post was originally broadcast Friday, June 8, 2007 on Tech Talk with Noobie, a weekly radio show on WCBK 102.3 FM in Martinsville, Indiana. Tech Talk with Noobie airs every Friday between 11:30 a.m. and noon. If you have a question you would like Noobie to answer on the air, simply e-mail your question to .