I think my first computer had Word for a word processing program, and my second had WordPerfect, which I liked better. But after those two computers, a word processing program became a very expensive extra. Fortunately, there is a free one out there that works just fine, and that's what I used for the past several years: Open Office.
When I got this computer the day before Christmas, one of the first things I did was download Open Office. However, when I went to my documents to make sure I could read my recipe collection and the poems I wrote from 2002 to 2006, all I got was gibberish. Keep in mind, most of them were written with the program I was trying to use to open them.
The poems aren't great. In fact most of them are mediocre to bad; but at the very least, they are a way for me to go back and see what I was thinking about on certain days. So I was somewhat dismayed to think I might have lost them forever.
When I tried to open a poem or recipe, I got a message saying that I apparently needed Microsoft Word to access them. So today I got to thinking that even if I had to buy Word (for over $100) it would be worth it to salvage my poems. Thank goodness I found out I could have it for a one-month trial before I bought it, so I signed up for that. After about forty-five minutes of waiting for it to download, I went straight to my documents to see what would happen.
FAIL! At this point I got a message that I needed Word Perfect to view the files.
I went to the Corel website and downloaded their thirty-day free trial.
Success.
I should have looked over the website more thoroughly, though, because there is actually a free download that I'll get when my thirty day trial is over. I could have skipped the trial offer entirely.
Most windows PCs come with Microsoft Works on them. Yet another Office type bundle. You could try importing your old files in the Works word processor. Sometimes doing an "import" into a blank document rather than just trying to open the original files works better. You get more file and program type options to choose from.
ReplyDeleteGlad you got it straightened out for free.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I hate about computers and multiple programs/platforms. We have PCs, Apple and Androids around here and none of them like to talk to each other.
ReplyDelete