# Can't open a MS Word 97-2003 .doc in MS Word 2007 or Wordpad



## pollyethylene (May 16, 2010)

Hi there, 

Well.. what the title says. It is driving me crazy. This one file I want will not open properly. Just one. I got the Mswrd632 error a couple of times, though not any longer. The file opens as a couple of lines of gibberish. 

I tried a few things, re-registering MS Word, doing a registry fix.. 

My computer has gone through quite a few changes recently. I had to do a couple clean re-installs and re-installing of programs.. I don't know if that has anything to do with it. I also tried a disk error check.

If anyone has any ideas about what is going on here, I would really appreciate it. Thanks!!!

---Jenna

PS. If I simply downgrade to the older version of Word, do you think that would solve it??

PPS. Using Win XP with Service Pack 3.


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## Clayd (May 9, 2010)

Maybe you didn't save the file as the extension 2007 needs. Just downgrade it to 03 and it should work.


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## mike.smith (May 12, 2010)

Hello pollyethylene,

yes, downgrading should help.

If that will not help then try to save your document in .rtf file (rich text format) or if everything fails, then use .txt format. In the latter one you will lose all of your formatting, but at least text will be preserved and you will not have to create it from the scratch.

I hope it helps

If not, contact me via my website

Mike


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## Clayd (May 9, 2010)

Well, first try saving a file as a .txt, and opening it. Just to see if it's the 2007 version that's corrupt. If it works, then just downgrade to '03.


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## pollyethylene (May 16, 2010)

Hi, 

Thanks Mike & Clayd. I'm going to try all these suggestions tonight, unfortunately I'm at work right now. But I do appreciate the advice and I'm hoping at the very least, downgrading will work...


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