I need Microsoft Word - Will this work?
 

Our computer came with Word Perfect, but not Word.

We need it to have Word, my wife needs it to work on very basic documents (no graphics, just typing, all under 5 pages).

She needs to be able to get e-mailed documents, make changes, send back out, etc. Nobody seems to use Word Perfect, they get sent in Word and won't convert.

I know nothing about computer programs, but there are a ton of Word software programs on eBay. Most of the inexpensive ones seem to be Word 2000, 2002 or 2004.

Like this:

NEW MICROSOFT WORKS SUITE 2006 + WORD 2002 WORKS 8 - eBay (item 380226655793 end time Apr-26-10 15:57:01 PDT)

For our limited needs, these seem to be ok. Is the above all I need to install on my computer? Is 2000 or 2002 ok, or do I really need to get a "newer" Word program?

Any thoughts appreciated!

Try Open Office.

Free, and compatible with MS Word, Excel, PP etc.





Tim

Why not get a Word compatible program free? OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite Same folks that brought you Mozilla and Firefox, et. al.

Open office and google documents, no need for office anymore

Can't believe no one mentioned Open Office yet?

I'm starting to get the sense I should maybe check out this Open Office thing. ;)

Thanks!

:)

For what it's worth software versions are like viruses. As more people use the newer versions the older ones become less compatible forcing you to upgrade.

Latest version of Word/Excel save as .docx and .xlsx which previous versions can't open.

If you decide to buy Word get the newest version that you can find.

That is technically correct, but easily fixed with a free download from Microsoft.

Download details: Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats

Allows you to open docx and xlsv files with older versions of office (back to Office 2000).

Oh, and there is a pretty cool application suite out there that is compatible with MS Office and free. You may not have heard of it, it is called Open Office. :D

Ok I'm going to be the lone dissenter...give OpenOffice a whirl...

OK, tried to download it.

Says I don't have enough "disk space" to install it.

Does that mean I don't have enough memory on my computer? Can I add more, and if so, what's the best way?

Says I don't have enough "disk space" to install it.


DELETE THE PORN

hmmmm... I'm not sure if anybody has mentioned this but OpenOffice might be a good solution.

However, you might also want to check fleabay for a used version of regular M$ Office :)

disk space = hard disc space
memory = normally refers to your ram

Now if you want to get exotic ... erase windows and then install Ubuntu which comes with lots of the free stuff you will need.

I got open office installed, and the Word program works.

I left the Word Perfect program installed on the computer.

The problem is, when someone emails a Word doc, and I click to open it, the computer for some reason automatically tries to open it with Word Perfect, which it can't do.

Is there a way I can "disable" WP, or otherwise make the computer use the Open Office/Word program to open Word docs?

Ya.... I've had good luck out of Open office... You might want to try that.... ;)

Try saving the Word doc first.

Then open Word, then go to File > Open > TheDocYouSaved and that should solve your problem.

Get rid of Word Perfect. You won't need it now that you have Open Office installed. It will free up a lot of space!
Michael

I've heard good things recently about Open Office!

Best,
Tom

Microsoft Works is probably the most useless bundle of software ever created. The standard used by the business world is Office (Word, Excel, etc.) and AFAIK Works can't even open those documents. It's basically a way by Microsoft to load SOMETHING that has SOME degree of spreadsheet or word processing capability onto a PC, the part they don't tell you is if you ever plan on sharing those documents with anyone else, you're gonna' be SOL and need to spend $1,000 on Office.

Or you can get OpenOffice. ;)

I forgot what I was going to say...........

Open Office, FTW!!

I use Office 2003 and there is a compatibility pack you can download to use the Office 2007 (.docx, .xlsx, etcx) files.

I can't believe nobody has mentioned Open Office yet :D

As far as the computer trying to open up the word doc in word perfect, try this (you should only need to do this once, not every time you open an attachment)

-Save the attachment to your machine somewhere, and locate the file on your machine
-Right click on the file
-Scroll down to "open with"
-Depending on your version of word, you will now see either a "choose default program" option in the menu OR a list of programs and beneath that a check box saying "always use this program for this file type" or something like that. You need to select open office to open this type of program.

Or, you can just remove word perfect from your machine.

Hope this helps!

Right click a document that you want to open in Open Office/Word. You should have an option to "Open with". You'll get a list of software that can open it, chose Open Office. There is also an option to "do this with all files like this"

On another note it would be great if there were a compatibility pack or some other way to open newer Word docs in older versions.

Just in case anyone does a search and finds this thread in the future, I just want to say I found and downloaded a free program called Open Office that seems to work great! I can now open all the Word docs that are emailed to me.

(I also got it to be the default program to open documents the way Tishabet/stomachmonkey) described.

Thanks all!