Cannot open word files from secondary drive

[CDC Mail Guy]

Here's the deal. Built a PC for a friend...brand new, but she does taxes and has all these word files on her old hard drive. So I slaved that drive and made it a secondary so she can keep those files without having to copy everything to cd's. PC is up and running (very well if I don't say so myself!), but now all those tax (word) files are not opening. I know that there is a simple fix to this, but I can't quite figure it out. I'm okay with the hardware aspect, but when it comes to software I need help.

 

[imported_LoKe]

Not opening...what error?
Tried copying them to the primary hard drive yet?

 

[CDC Mail Guy]

yes, copied to primary...I have to check the error message but basically "windows cannot open this file...missing extension" etc. Will have an exact "" tomorrow.

 

[CDC Mail Guy]

Okay here it is "Works cannot open C\documents and settings\etc...bglah blah blah. This may be in use by another application, the file format may not be supported by any of the installed converters or be converted" Also, a quick note. These word files are tax forms, so should she reinstall her tax program on the new primary drive to get them to work?

 

[xgsound]

I don't know if this applys, but here goes.

I notice that the error states "works" cannot open. There is a difference between Microsoft Works and Microsoft Word. This can be true even if the file has a .doc extention. The .doc file could also have other inserted items in it that refer to other files (charts, spreadsheet, graphs) that will need a proper address (slave is no longer c drive) and decoder for the file format.

I would try to install and use the program and version that created the files to open them. If the files were created with Works 4.0, use that to open them. If the files were created with Word 97, use that to open them and so on. This has helped me in the past. YMMV


Jim