Thanks for your patience:

The problem I have with opening word is not that word won't open. It will. It's that it won't open in a specific document, which is did before. The attached screen shot should tell the story.

---- Wordsmasher

Attached Images

Screen Shot.jpg (100.5 KB, 16 views)

If I understand your description properly, you can open documents if you start Word first and then navigate to the document in Word's Open dialog box.

My question was: Can you right-click a the icon for a Word document and choose Open With? If that works, try that approach again and this time choose to set Word as the default for *.doc files.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

I appreciate your help, but what your suggesting was something I did right off the bat when I discovered the problem. I have set Word as default. Ironically, Open Office and Libre, two programs I tried out, can be opened directly, but a word document can't. What I get is a blank word screen as I showed you. Since Open Office and Libre aren't the defaults I find your remedy dubious. Evidently, you don't need to have a document be the word processor to directly into it.

---- Wordsmasher

When double-clicking doesn't open a file, the issue is with file associations in Windows. In this case, it is possible that having both OpenOffice (or LibreOffice) and Microsoft Office on the same machine is causing trouble, because they may "compete" over file associations. I suggest that you uninstall word processors that you don't need; then it should be easier to set the default that you want.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

That's not it. I appreciate your effort though. I think its one of Windows blasted updates!

Wordsmasher

I have never experienced that a Windows patch has affected the file associations for Office. Perhaps if you are running an Insider (preview) version of Windows, unexpected things may occur.

Have you tried uninstalling OpenOffice and LibreOffice, assuming that you are no longer using those programs?

A certain file type may have no default program assigned at all, or it may have the "wrong" program assigned, meaning that the default is a program that usually does not open or create such files.

I suppose you can still open the "problem" files by starting Word first? Or has the symptoms for this problem changed?

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

I uninstalled Open Office and Libre and I am following the guidelines for opening a document. You are very patient to respond, but nothing works so far. It could be a glitch in a program, but there's nothing wrong with Word. I can still open a document inside Word, so I guess I'll settle for that. By the way, I recently switched from Word 2000 to Word 2016. It has a lot of bells and whistles I don't need but little more is offered for what I need in a word processor. Windows 10 has caused me problems in the past and, in fact, crashed as soon as I brought a new laptop home. Sometimes I wish Microsoft Word would just leave things as they were, especially that flawed monster Windows 10. Of all the Windows operating systems I was happiest with Windows XP, but every time I bought a new laptop I was stuck with an inferior upgrade.

Thank you for your patience.... Wordsmasher