Issue here is you are enabling bad security. If someone has an issue with the interface on newer versions of Office then they should use OpenOffice, not stick with the old versions of Office.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/su … c1-b9c4fe5b6b90
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice … support-roadmap

Easiest would be to uninstall Office 2007. If it's needed it can be installed again.

Office isn't part of SFP so it's likely that office updates being installed which is how they are being added back. The renaming you are doing is also done by malware for applications that are known to be used widely.

Detect and Repair would do what it says. Usually it requires the original files to do a proper repair and if that's not available it would error out.

One way you could assist others with their PCs is by using a remote administration tool, like Teamviewer.

Regarding the actual issue, one thing I could suggest is to completely get rid of MS Office 2007 for a while and see if the issue persists. A malware scan would be advised as well in such scenarios.
Maybe even a sfc /scannow.

Usually, when things like this happen on my machines, other things start breaking and I end up reinstalling Windows to fix them all for good.

Rekrul wrote on 2020-05-25, 18:51:

Something is causing her copy of Windows to be obsessed with using Word 2007 to open documents. All the results I found just say to use "Open With..." to associate documents with the version you want. She even tried going through the app in the Control panel to set associations and despite setting ".DOC" files to the EXE for Word 2003, they still open in Word 2007. Yes, the box for "Always use this program" was checked, although she said it was grayed out (unclickable).

Could it be that the problem is that she has not accounted for the fact that Word 2007 switched to .DOCX?

DosFreak wrote on 2020-05-25, 19:28:

Issue here is you are enabling bad security. If someone has an issue with the interface on newer versions of Office then they should use OpenOffice, not stick with the old versions of Office.

She's set in her ways and prefers to stick with what she's comfortable with. She also has a quite extensive list of auto-correct entries and neither of us is quite sure how to back them all up and port them all over to a new version.

For the record, I do not have any version of Microsoft Word.

DosFreak wrote on 2020-05-25, 19:28:

Easiest would be to uninstall Office 2007. If it's needed it can be installed again.

Unfortunately, she's not sure where the disc is. She moved recently and some things seem to have gotten lost in the shuffle.

DosFreak wrote on 2020-05-25, 19:28:

Office isn't part of SFP so it's likely that office updates being installed which is how they are being added back. The renaming you are doing is also done by malware for applications that are known to be used widely.

OK. However that doesn't explain why Windows won't let her change the association.

She's had both programs installed for at least a couple years and Word 2007 never used to come up until she started using the speech recognition. Now it seems to be the default. Neither version is listed in the Default Programs app. When she uses the Open With option, Word 2003 isn't among the list of programs. I've instructed her to manually browse to the Office 2003 directory (c:\Program Files x86\Microsoft Office\Office11), and select the WINWORD.EXE file, but when she selects it and it goes back to the previous window, it's not one of the choices despite the fact that she just told it that was the program she wants to use.

Another strange thing; She was able to successfully set it to always use Word 2003 if she double-clicks a .DOC attachment in Thunderbird (email), but when double-clicking a file in Explorer, it still opens in Word 2007. As far as I know, Thunderbird has no special provisions for overriding the Windows file associations and just calls the normal Windows file open routine. Why would it open in Word 2003 there and Word 2007 from Explorer?

Regardless of whatever security risk Word 2003 represents, why is it impossible to get Windows 7 to associate .DOC files with it? It literally will not let her select the EXE for Word 2003 to associate files with.

Jorpho wrote on 2020-05-25, 20:22:

Could it be that the problem is that she has not accounted for the fact that Word 2007 switched to .DOCX?

I'm not 100% positive, but I could swear that a few years ago, when she first encountered a .DOCX file, I helped her locate and install some update for Word 2003 that allowed it to handle .DOCX files.

Word 2007 was installed by someone else there. He was doing some other work on her system and he had an old copy of 2007 that he wasn't using, so he gave it to her and installed it for her. That was at least 1-2 years ago and it happily resided on her system, not interfering with anything until she recently used speech recognition for the first time. That's when all the problems started. It might just be a coincidence, but that's about when all the problems started.

Renaming the EXE for Word 2007 seemed to work for about a month. Since she couldn't associate the files with the 2003 version, I reasoned that if the file for 2007 was changed to make it no longer executable, the system wouldn't be able to use it. And for a month it couldn't, and defaulted to 2003. Then all of a sudden, it came back and now it re-installs itself every time a .DOC file is clicked.

Even if .DOCX files are associated with Word 2007, should that prevent her from associating .DOC files with 2003?

Rekrul wrote on 2020-05-27, 01:28:

Another strange thing; She was able to successfully set it to always use Word 2003 if she double-clicks a .DOC attachment in Thunderbird (email), but when double-clicking a file in Explorer, it still opens in Word 2007. As far as I know, Thunderbird has no special provisions for overriding the Windows file associations and just calls the normal Windows file open routine.

I believe it does have special provisions.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1200880

Rekrul wrote on 2020-05-27, 01:28:

I'm not 100% positive, but I could swear that a few years ago, when she first encountered a .DOCX file, I helped her locate and install some update for Word 2003 that allowed it to handle .DOCX files.

I'm just saying, if only the association for .DOC was changed, and it so happens she's trying to open a .DOCX (or something else like a .DOCM), then of course that association would be unchanged. It would be an unfortunate thing to accidentally overlook.

My Windows 7 "Set Associations" applet appears to let me set separate assocations for .doc and .docx documents, if that counts for anything.

I've never had to use it but MS do have an official tool to remove office.
https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/unin … cc-2fdf5dbf61d8

Work around is have the user open word then open the document via file open, sure its a few more clicks but its a 100% success rate.
This removes user error as any files that don't show this way cant be opened by 2003 anyway.

The update that allowed 2003 to open docx files is the "Office Compatibility Pack" maybe it's been lost in all the troubleshooting?
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/2526 … bility-pack-sp3

Jorpho wrote on 2020-05-27, 02:56:

I believe it does have special provisions.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1200880

Yes, I guess I was mistaken about that.

Jorpho wrote on 2020-05-27, 02:56:

I'm just saying, if only the association for .DOC was changed, and it so happens she's trying to open a .DOCX (or something else like a .DOCM), then of course that association would be unchanged. It would be an unfortunate thing to accidentally overlook.

I thought of that too, but I had her check and she says that the files she's clicking on have a .DOC extension. I had her turn on the option to show extensions.

chinny22 wrote on 2020-05-27, 09:54:

Work around is have the user open word then open the document via file open, sure its a few more clicks but its a 100% success rate.
This removes user error as any files that don't show this way cant be opened by 2003 anyway.

That's what she's been doing, but she's unhappy that she can't just double-click a document to open it in Word 2003. She justifiably says that it used to work that way, it should be able to be made to work that way again.

chinny22 wrote on 2020-05-27, 09:54:

The update that allowed 2003 to open docx files is the "Office Compatibility Pack" maybe it's been lost in all the troubleshooting?

It's possible, but that shouldn't affect plain .DOC files.

Also, the switch to it using Word 2007 happened out of the blue, not as the result of messing with anything. Everything worked fine for years, she used Speech recognition and Word 2007 started coming up. She renamed the EXE, it went back to 2003, then it started coming up again and now there's no way to get it to use 2003 again, short of running that version and then using the Open command to load documents.

I don't want to divert this thread away from the problem at hand, but I've discovered something strange about the associations on my own system. While testing FileTypesMan from NirSoft as a possible solution, I noticed that some of the associations are pointing to the wrong programs, but not using them. .AVI says it's associated with WMPlayer, but I have it associated with MPC-HC. .TXT says it's associated with Notpad, btu I have it associated with Metapad, a different program. To be clear, my associations work, AVI opens in MPC-HC and TXT opens in Metapad, but I don't understand why Windows says they're associated with Microsoft programs when they're not. I even used the MS command line tool ftype to check and it agreed with FileTypesMan.

How is it that Windows says they're associated with one program, but they open in a different program when I double-click them? Why doesn't the association correctly reflect the program that's being used? And yes, this is right from Explorer, not some other program.

Nothing is out of the blue. In this case it sounds like the speech program has linked itself to 2007 , but maybe an update, maybe she did something without realising it.

You can try reinstalling 2003 (not just a repair) over the top and it should apply its file associations over the top of existing ones. but if 2007 is still installed you still run the possibility of it overriding any settings again.
if she really wants to keep 2007 You could also uninstall the speech software and see if that is the root of the cause, but if she's stuck with 2003 over 07 this long I cant see her "upgrading" to a office version that's already over 10 years old itself and also no longer supported by MS

chinny22 wrote on 2020-05-27, 13:03:

Nothing is out of the blue. In this case it sounds like the speech program has linked itself to 2007 , but maybe an update, maybe she did something without realising it.

She swears that she didn't do anything different to cause this to happen.

chinny22 wrote on 2020-05-27, 13:03:

You can try reinstalling 2003 (not just a repair) over the top and it should apply its file associations over the top of existing ones.

Will that affect her settings or her auto-correct entries? She REALLY doesn't want to lose those.

In other news, I had her try NirSoft's FileTypesMan program, which is supposed to let you change associations. I had her change all of the actions for .DOC and .DOCX (just to be safe) so that instead of pointing to "...\Office12\winword.exe" they all pointed to "...\Office11\winword.exe". I had her close the program and run it again to verify that the changes were there. It made absolutely no difference.

Apparently there are two sets of associations in Windows: The ones it shows you and the ones it actually uses. On my system, it insists that .TXT is associated with Notepad, but I have it associated with Metapad, and that's what opens when I double-click a text file.

Rekrul wrote on 2020-05-27, 11:55:

While testing FileTypesMan from NirSoft as a possible solution, I noticed that some of the associations are pointing to the wrong programs, but not using them. .AVI says it's associated with WMPlayer, but I have it associated with MPC-HC. .TXT says it's associated with Notpad, btu I have it associated with Metapad, a different program. To be clear, my associations work, AVI opens in MPC-HC and TXT opens in Metapad, but I don't understand why Windows says they're associated with Microsoft programs when they're not. I even used the MS command line tool ftype to check and it agreed with FileTypesMan.

ftype seems to deal with file types and not extensions. What exactly is the output of "ftype txtfile" ? And the output of "assoc .txt" ?

Rekrul wrote on 2020-05-28, 09:19:

Apparently there are two sets of associations in Windows: The ones it shows you and the ones it actually uses. On my system, it insists that .TXT is associated with Notepad, but I have it associated with Metapad, and that's what opens when I double-click a text file.

There are two sets: one that applies to all users on the system, and one with associations specific to the current user (and which will override any corresponding system associations).

Open the Registry Editor and look up the key for an extension (such as .doc) under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes (the "(Default) " value in the key points to the key for the file type to associate with that extension), and then look for a key for that extension under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes.

The HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT hive is a symbolic link to the combined contents of the above locations (with any HKCU entries overriding corresponding HKLM entries) .