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RealBlackStuff · #1 09-25-2004

I installed a Dell PC for a customer. It has MS Works 7.0 as standard.
The customer has loads of MS Word documents with the Word-extension .DOC

I have set the file-type .DOC to associate with the Works Wordprocessor, and when I double-click a .DOC file, it opens correctly with Works-Word. However, it converts the .DOC file upon opening into a .WPS file, the default for that program.

At my customer's site, the document gets only printed and it never changes. But when you then close the file and/or the program, the sh.t-program keeps asking to save the changes (because it converted it to .WPS).

Is there any way to stop this evil-doer from converting, and can I set the default filetype to .DOC?

It drives my customer bananas!!!

Nic · #2 09-25-2004

Why doesn't he simply use Wordpad to open any .doc files? Wordpad also uses the .doc file extension.

Either that or he simply clicks 'No' when asked to save changes in Works.

Does Works have a default save word file as option in the tools\preferences menu (or any of its menus - I don't use Works so I don't know its options)?

If your customer has documents that are only printed, not edited, then they should consider Adobe Acrobat .pdf format for the documents. At least then they can't be acidentally changed and the layout will be consistent regardless of wp program settings.

RealBlackStuff · #3 09-25-2004

These files all have a special font and page-settings, which are not available under Wordpad.
That "Works-Word" looks and feels like a castrated version of the real Word, except for the stupid .wps extension.
I will set all .DOC files to read-only, so no accidents can happen.

But I still want to change the default as described.
Any offers?

RealBlackStuff · #4 09-26-2004

Stupid Microsoft (but then again, I am not alone with this opinion!).

Quote:

Unfortunately though, the program is not flawless. As a stand-alone package, it almost is, but as soon as you've got some other program to work with - particularly Microsoft Office - it all goes wrong.
Microsoft claim that their Works 7 program is fully compatible with Office, and I suppose, to an extent, it is. It opens Word documents, you can edit them and save the changes, but it's far from easy. You need to manually set up Windows so that the default program used to read ".doc" files is Microsoft Works Word Processor. Once the documents are open, it runs fine until you try and save it. The default save format is ".wps" and you can't change the setting from this. You need to access the drop-down list to save it as a Word document. When you do this, the files that you've just spent hours properly formatting loose some of the layout, and blank pages are inserted at random. The size of the ".doc" files created by Works are huge. I saved a file of about 8 pages that turned out to be 5Mb. Opened in Word and saved, it went down to 52k.

I'll be installing a "real" MS Word on that PC.

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How to change Default .WPS to .DOC in MS Works 7.0