Hints & Tips

Difficulty opening Microsoft Office files (Part 1)

If you are having trouble opening Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents, check to make sure that the file name has the appropriate file extension:

1. Word files should have .doc
2. Excel files should have .xls
3. PowerPoint files should have .ppt

If the file doesn't, add the appropriate extension manually. In the future you can avoid such problems by making sure that the box labeled “Append file extension” is checked when you go to save your documents.

Difficulty opening Microsoft Office files (Part 2)

If you are having trouble opening Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents, check to see if the file name has one of the following file extensions:

1. Word: .docx
2. Excel: .xlsx
3. PowerPoint: .pptx

If the file does have one of these extensions, it means that the file was created in either Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows or Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac. Since you are having difficulty opening the file, you are probably either running Microsoft Office 2003 for Windows or Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac.

If you are a Mac user, you can still open .docx and .pptx files if you download the
"Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 0.2.1 (Beta)".

Difficulty opening PDF files

If you are having trouble opening PDF files it may be because the file was downloaded with the wrong file extension. For example, you may have downloaded a file called “statistics.asp” and when you double-clicked on it, the computer didn’t know which application to open it with. The solution is to the change the file extension from “asp” to “pdf”. The file name would then be “statistics.pdf”. When you double-click on the renamed file, it should open with no problem in either Preview or Adobe Reader.