Set MS Word File Associations

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I work both with Office 2003 and 2010 on my w7 Home Edition machine. Unfortunately when I loaded 2010 I selected the Update option which uninstalled 2003. So I reinstalled Word 2003. However, right now the association remains 2010 for both doc and docx files whereas I want doc associated with 2003 and docx with 2010. Unfortunately the Word exe files for both 2003 and 2010 have the same filename (WINWORD.EXE) but they exist in different folders. When setting the file association for doc files I select the Browse option and go to the proper 2003 folder and select WINWORD.EXE. But that doesn’t work because the system reverts back to 2010.
Any ideas on how to force it to associate doc files with the proper Word program?

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Chuck. Do you realize that 2010 can open and store Documents in both .doc and .docx formats? I guess I do not understand why you would always need to associate .doc files with 2003. Heck you can even change the default save as to .doc in 2010 rather than it’s original .docx.

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Hi John. I realize that I can edit doc files with 2010; however, I develop lesson materials used to train seniors at our local senior center. With several year’s experience teaching seniors I’ve discovered that they need materials that are simple and go slowly. Most tutorials, books etc. are too complicated or go too fast for them so I generate lessons in an appropriate form. When generating the lessons on my home computer I use 2010 but I still need to refer to an actual Word 2003 program for things like toolbar formats, fonts, dialog boxes, styles and other features unique to 2003 some of which I need to copy and insert into the lesson documents. I really goofed when I installed 2010 using the default Update option instead of Custom. Custom has an option to retain the previous Office version whereas Update deletes it. Office 2003 doesn’t have that option. At the senior center I used the custom option on all of our PCs so we can select 2003 or 2010. I think the best solution for my home computer may be to uninstall all Office programs, install 2003 and then install 2010 with the custom option. Then the All Programs MS Office menu would have links to either 2003 or 2010.

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You may be asking for trouble by installing Office 2003 after Office 2010. You should always install Office starting with the oldest version first and then going forward to the most recent version. That sequence ends up with fewer strange and unexplained problems in using Office.

If you really need to open a specific file type with a specific version of Word go to Control Panel | Programs | Make a file type always open in a specific program. Select the file extension, click the “Change Program” button, then click the “Browse” button, navigate to the version of Word or whatever program you want to use, click OK.

Joe

--Joe

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As I mentioned in my original post the Change Program bit doesn’t work even if I browse to and select the actual 2003 winword.ext. It still reverts to the 2010 version. You are probably right in that I need to uninstall all Office programs, install 2003, then install 2010 with the “regain older version” option. I know that works.

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If the suggestion from JoeP517 doesn’t work, you’ll have to edit the registry entries directly. In regedit.exe, open the key
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTWord.Document.8shell
Under that key, go to …Editcommand and …Opencommand (and maybe …Printcommand and …Newcommand). In each of those locations, edit the value with the name (Default) to use the full path to the Word 2003 copy of WINWORD.EXE — that is, the one in the OFFICE11 folder instead of OFFICE14.

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