How can Tiger open Microsoft Word documents sent by e-mail?

Question

How can Tiger open Microsoft Word documents sent by e-mail?

I recently upgraded to Tiger and use Appleworks 6, which is unable to read the Microsoft Word documents I frequently receive by e-mail. Is there any way I could read such documents, or should I get Microsoft Word? If so, which number/level would you advise? (I'm happy with Appleworks.)

eMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11), 1 GB SDRAM

Posted on Oct 2, 2008 10:59 AM

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Answer 1

K.S.

Level 4

3,700 points

Oct 2, 2008 12:13 PM in response to Janet Peterson

You can try and open them with TextEdit (which you should already have) or you could download a freeware application like NeoOffice or Bean, before shelling out the big bucks. They may well do the trick, particularly NeoOffice.

http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/download.php#download
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/24881/bean

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Answer 2

Oct 2, 2008 8:38 PM in response to K.S.

TextEdit should be the default program for opening Microsoft Word (.doc) files. Mac OS comes with it installed. All you need to do is double click the icon and it should open in TextEdit.

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Answer 3

Oct 3, 2008 12:31 PM in response to K.S.

I do have TextEdit, but I can't figure out how to use it. When I clicked on the icon I received in the email I got a notice that the"translator could not read this file". I moved it onto the desktop, opened TextEdit & then moved the document to TextEdit, but nothing happened.

Thanks for your response, or as we say here in Georgia, youralls'responses.

I think I'll try downloading NeoOffice.

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Answer 4

Oct 4, 2008 4:39 PM in response to Janet Peterson

Hi! If it doesn't have ".doc" at the end of the file name try adding it and then opening. Tom

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Answer 5

Oct 5, 2008 9:49 AM in response to Thomas Bryant

No luck. It does have "doc" after it. I opened TextEdit & moved the document onto it, but my Mac booped at me when It tried to open it.

Would this help?

"Symptom

You expect TextEdit to open your HTML file in plain text form for editing, but it renders the file into its consumable form.

Solution
1. Open TextEdit.
2. Choose Preferences from the TextEdit application menu.
3. Click the Plain Text radio button for New Document Format.
4. Under Saving, click the checkbox to turn off "Append '.txt' extension to plain text files."
5. Under Rich text processing, click the checkbox to turn on "Ignore rich text commands in HTML files."
6. Be sure the checkbox for "Wrap to Page" is deselected (Figure 1)."

I have no ideal if the mystery document is an HTML file. (Whatever that is!)

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Answer 6

Oct 5, 2008 4:31 PM in response to Janet Peterson

Hi! "HTML, an initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for Web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document — by denoting certain text as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on — and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects. HTML is written in the form of tags, surrounded by angle brackets. HTML can also describe, to some degree, the appearance and semantics of a document, and can include embedded scripting language code (such as JavaScript) which can affect the behavior of Web browsers and other HTML processors."

Tom

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Answer 7

JMVP

Level 6

16,851 points

Oct 6, 2008 8:07 AM in response to Janet Peterson

I'd second K.S.'s tip about downloading one of the free open source alternatives to Microsoft Office (although I'd go with Open Office 2.3.1 from http://www.openoffice.org/ ).

AppleWorks 6 should be able to open Word .doc files. When you launch AppleWorks and select Open from the File menu, do you have Document type set to All types, and File Format set to All Available?

You can also control-click on a saved Word document and use the Open With... pop-up menu to see what programs are available that recognize Word on your Mac. You can make permanent changes to the Open With... selection by doing Get Info on a Word file, selecting Open With from the pull-down menu, and clicking the Change All button.

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Answer 8

JMVP

Level 6

16,851 points

Oct 7, 2008 6:02 AM in response to Janet Peterson

Do the problematic Word attachments end in ".doc" or in ".docx"?
Neither AppleWorks 6 nor TextEdit will handle Microsoft's marketing-driven "improved" file format used in Mac Office 2008 / Windows Office 2007 (which is almost-but-not-really based on XML). There's a backwards-compatible option in those versions of Word to "Save As" Word 97 -2004 format (.doc). The practical solution where I work is to track down anyone sending .docx and threaten them with grievous bodily harm unless they resend as .doc and swear to never use .docx again.
Microsoft has a converter that (allegedly) converts the new format to the vastly more common one, but that requires a previous copy of Office (Office 2004 or Office X).
You can try the Mac OS X Dashboard widget DocX Converter instead.

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