Opening Old MS Word Files

I run MS Office 2003 on Windows XP. I want to open some files that I created on whatever version of Word I was using in 1993 but I get a message that I'm trying to open a document that was prepared in an earlier version of Office, and that opening this type of file is blocked by my registry policy setting. Is there anything I can use to open these old documents? I can open some documents from that era, but the properties tell me they are Word 6/Windows 95, or Word 97 documents so they seem to have been converted somehow.

Many thanks.

Alistair

 

Hi alistair,
have a read here, might find something helpful

http://techpaul.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/opening-old-word-files-after-office-sp3/

 

Alistair,

An excellent link hawk22 provided. One of the suggestions in the link is to utilize Open Office (a free download). I use it quite a bit and it should let you open the older Word documents. Once open, the "Save as" - "Save as type" options should let then save in "Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP (.doc) ". Then you should be able to open and edit in your own Word application.

I should have noted that you would use the Write application in Open Office - the counterpart to Microsoft Word. I should note that I don't have MS Office 2003 but it does work in MS Office 2007.

 

Many thanks to Hawk and Virginia. I tried the registry change procedure given in Hawk's link and it did what I wanted. I've also noted for future reference the suggestions to use Open Office.

Alistair

 

you're welcome Alistair, I am glad it did the trick for you.