I recently installed Office 2010 on my home computer. I have docs saved in Word 2003 and 2007. Since the 2010 was installed I have trouble accessing Word 2007 and 2003 docs. They present as "read only" files. In addition if I take a stick with a Word 2010 doc attached to my office (Word 2007) the file will not open and I get a "file corrupted" msg.



This is incredibly frustrating and shouldn't be happening.

Any suggestions?

Hi ibytoohi,

A 'good' installation of Word 2010 can certainly read Word 97-2003 and 2007 files. If the files are presenting as 'read-only', that suggests you may have transferred them via a CD/DVD. Windows automatically marks all such files as 'read-only'. You can remove the 'read-only' attribute via Windows Explorer.

Your problem with Word 2010 files in Word 2007 suggests you may have turned Word 2010's compatability mode check off. By default, Word creates docx files in a compatability mode that can be opened by Word 2007. Earlier file doc & docx versions are opened in this mode also. In Word 2010, '[Compatability Mode]' ordinarily displays at the top of the screen. To change it, look under File|Info. If 'Compatability Mode' is displayed, that also means the active document is in that mode. You can also tell Word whether to check the save compatability under File|Info > Prepare for Sharing.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

This is a known behavior with documents stored directly to mobile media, i.e. a "stick," from within Word. Doing this produces corrupted files. This has been the case with every version of Word from at least Word 97.

Never access (Open or Print) documents on mobile media from within Word. Never save or edit documents on mobile media from within Word. Instead work within Word only on documents saved to your hard drive. Then copy documents to/from mobile media from Windows.

Thanks to all for your answers. That should do it!