MS Word Files Become NOTEPAD files

I'm looking at Word 97, but Word 95 might have a similar option.

Click File->Save As... and there should be an Options... button. One option says: "Save Word files as [pull-down list]". If this is set to text-only...

Your key to this problem is in the fact that they come up garbled in Notepad. If the files were saved in Word as "text only", they should then open (without formatting) in Notepad. Further, if that were the case, Word should warn the user that saving the file as a text document will cause loss of formatting... so I don't think the problem is in the save!

No, I believe that what is happening is that the Windows file association for .DOC files has changed, with the new association being Notepad rather than Word.

Select one of the problem files' icons, then hold Shift and right-click on the icon. Next, select Open With from the context menu, make sure that the "Always open..." check box is selected, and then browse to the Word executable. This should cause the file type to be re-associated with Word...

open up My Computer and goto "File", "Options" and click on "File Types" if the association for ".doc" files is notepad, then there lies your problem. The garrbage is probably formatting of some sort getting minced by notepad. Delete this "Association" and open the file again with Word

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