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Office 2007 error: "*.doc is not a valid win32 application" [SOLVED]

TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
edited July 2009 in Help / Advice Forum
Hi, and thanks in advance.
So I was at my parents' house today, and as usual am now saddled with their IT issues. My mom's Dell XPS desktop was recently upgraded to Office 2007. Now upon trying to open a .doc, the error message in the thread's title shows up. However, by opening Word and then opening the file that way, the error is circumvented.

I believe the problem to be somewhere in the file associations, since .docx files are opened with "Microsoft Office Word 2007" and upon investigation (the Open With... menu) .doc files are associated with something like "Microsoft Office Component". Manually associating Word from the Office folder does nothing.

Help is greatly appreciated.

TL DR on

Posts

  • JHunzJHunz Registered User regular
    edited July 2009
    I'm using 2007, and here's what I have in my file association details:
    (From Windows Explorer) Tools->Folder Options->File Types->DOC->Advanced button.
    Choose the Open action, click Edit.
    Action:
&Open

Application used to perform action:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\WINWORD.EXE" /n /dde

Use DDE (checkbox, is checked)

DDE Message:
[REM _DDE_Direct][FileOpen("%1")]

Application:
WinWord

Topic:
System

    JHunz on
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  • RuckusRuckus Registered User regular
    edited July 2009
    Performing a repair install of office 2007 may repair the file association as well.

    Ruckus on
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    edited July 2009
    Ruckus wrote: »
    Performing a repair install of office 2007 may repair the file association as well.

    The repair and uninstall functions kept hanging. I'm going to bring my disc up today since theirs was scratched, but I'm concerned if something is corrupt and can't be uninstalled, there may be a more serious situation to deal with. I wonder if this came about because of upgrading from 2003 as opposed to doing a full reinstall.

    TL DR on
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    edited July 2009
    JHunz wrote: »
    I'm using 2007, and here's what I have in my file association details:
    (From Windows Explorer) Tools->Folder Options->File Types->DOC->Advanced button.
    Choose the Open action, click Edit.
    Action:
&Open

Application used to perform action:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\WINWORD.EXE" /n /dde

Use DDE (checkbox, is checked)

DDE Message:
[REM _DDE_Direct][FileOpen("%1")]

Application:
WinWord

Topic:
System

    Thanks. I'll see if I can manually edit this. Also going to try a copy/paste of my Office2007 folder on top of theirs. Really hoping not to have to format the PC over something so silly.

    TL DR on
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    edited July 2009
    Ok, repairing, reinstalling, etc didn't help. I ended up having to edit some registry entries. Not sure exactly what I did, but I just started making entries for .doc congruent with those from .docx and eventually Word 2007 appeared in the list of choices under the 'Open With...' menu. Thanks for all the input.

    TL DR on
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