Hello,

I have Office XP (Microsoft Word and Excel from that are what I'm interested in specifically) and 32-bit Office 2010 both installed on a Windows 7 64-bit OS machine. I also have the microsoft office compatibility pack installed (the one that allows Office XP/2003 to open .docx files, available here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/down...ails.aspx?id=3)

What I'd like to happen is for .doc files to be automatically opened in Office XP word when doubleclicked, and .docx files to be opened in Word 2010 when doubleclicked.

I used the regserver command to make Word XP the default Word program. In other words, after I installed Office 2010 and Office XP, I did the following:

Start > Run > C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\winword.exe /unregserver

Start > Run > C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office10\winword.exe /regserver

(Office10 corresponds to Office XP, Office14 corresponds to Office 2010)

My desktop then looks like this:



The top document is a .doc document, and the bottom one is a .docx document.

Now, at this point, if I doubleclick a .doc file on my desktop, it opens correctly in Word 2003. However, even though I have the .docx compatibility pack installed that allows Word 2003 to open .docx files, when I doubleclick the .docx file, the file opens in Word 2010. This doesn't sound like a problem at first, except that since Word 2003 was set as my default office, before opening the file, Office 2010 now starts configuring itself as the "default" Office program:





This takes about a minute to complete before the document opens in Word 2010, and not only that, now Word 2010 has been set as my default Office program for both .doc and .docx files - now my desktop looks like this:



You can see the icon difference of that top word .doc in the immediate above screenshot and my very first screenshot - indeed Office 2010 has unwantedly assigned itself as the default .doc opener.

Now, whenever I open a .doc file with a doubleclick, it opens in Office 2010. Blegh.

Is there a way to stop Office 2010 from configuring itself as the default .doc opener? Is there a system file that I can modify that can stop this:



from happening when I doubleclick a .docx file, when I've already registered Office XP Word as my default Word program? Or even better, is there a way for me to explicitly set Office XP Word as the default .doc opener, and the Office 2010 Word as the default .docx opener, without Office 2010 overwriting Office XP as the default .doc opener whenever I doubleclick a .docx or .doc file?