Opening Attachments in Vista

When trying to open attachments from mail account, using Vista as OS, the attachment opens but the text (in the case of .doc) file is garbled. This occurs for all file extensions. Office 2003 has been loaded on to the PC, I had assumed that it was possibly that the application was not mapped to the extension in folder options. But i cannot find in Vista where you can map the extension to the application name. In XP it is My Computer/Tools/Folder Options/File Types, but in Vista i cannot find it. Am i wrong In my assumption, if so can anyone help guide me in right direction as to a solution or if this mapping is actually the probable solution does anyone know where it can be found in vista.

Thanks In Advance
Owen