Hi folks, One of the users in my office has problems opening a specific Word document. We are all running a complete install of Office 2003 Pro, on XP Pro SP2, on an assortment of Dell PCs. She has been sent an email from another of our offices with a word document attached. On trying to open this, she gets an error message "you are attempting to open a file that was created in an earlier version of Microsoft Office. This file type is blocked from opening in this version by your registry policy setting" If she forwards this email to her manager, or to myself, it opens fine. I tried saving the attachment on my PC and opening it in wordpad - I got a message which I don't have in front of me but suggested that it was in word 2.0 format and opening this type of file was blocked. Now obviously, I can save this document in a more recent format so that she can open it - but this is not a one-off, she will be getting many more similar documents. I believe these are automatically generated, so asking the sender to save it in a more recent format probably isn't an option. I have tried searching on google for this, and all I managed to find was instructions for how to block the opening of earlier formats (and on checking the user's PC, the registry settings for this were not in place). I reloaded the PC from scratch before she got it, and did not place any such restrictions on it. The user is set up as an administrator on her PC. In the absence of any better suggestions, I am going to try reloading office when she goes for lunch today, but my hopes of this resolving the problem are not high - if Wordpad is prevented from opening it, I can't imagine reloading office would change Wordpad? Thanks for reading. Any ideas?

First hit when I Googled: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922849 Did you try that? Life's more painless for the brainless.

I did indeed, and I have checked that the FileOpenBlock registry entries are not in place. As for the earlier part of that KB entry which talks about Exempt directories.. she's trying to open it directly from within her inbox, which is held on a server... The only difference I can think of between her machine and, say, mine is that hers has been reloaded and updated online more recently so may have the latest service pack on whereas mine doesn't?

According to the article, the registry entries need to be there. "In Word 2003, there are no trusted locations. You can create an exempt location to override the registry policy settings. To create an exempt location, follow these steps: 1. Exit Word 2003. 2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK. 3. Locate and then click to select one of the following registry subkeys: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common 4. Point to New on the Edit menu, and then click Key. 5. Type OICEExemptions for the name of the key. 6. Point to New on the Edit menu, and then click String Value. 7. Type a string name, and then press ENTER. For example, type ExemptDirectory. 8. Right-click the string name that you typed in step 7, and then click Modify. 9. In the Value data box, type the path of the directory that contains the file, and then click OK. Note You must create the folder. Any subfolders are not automatically exempted. For any additional folders that you would like to make exempt, repeat steps 6-9. 10. On the File menu, click Exit to exit Registry Editor." I'd also have her save the file first and then open it. Life's more painless for the brainless.

Thanks, I meant that the registry entries for preventing the opening of the files (mentioned further down the article) weren't there. I had already tried saving the document to her desktop and opening it from there to no avail, though of course I haven't told it her desktop is a safe location yet. It didn't really make a lot of sense when I first read it to have to override registry policy settings preventing her opening the file when as far as I was aware no such policy had been put in place! It also seems daft to have to add every folder and subfolder into the registry like this to enable users to open documents from there...? One for next week now anyway, I can't take over the user's machine for more than half an hour till monday lunchtime...

I would just add the My Documents path to the newly created Reg Key. Have the user save to that path. Life's more painless for the brainless.

Thanks again.. You rely on the user having the intelligence to save things there and find them again though ;-)