What to do with those "docx" files

Filed in archive Online Services on August 14, 2007

Have you received a file from another business and found that you could not open it? That has happened to me several times, but not with the regularity that it has happened to me over the last two weeks. I have been receiving a file with the extension ".docx".

A file with the ".docx" extension, instead of the ".doc" extension, is actually created by using Microsoft Word 2007 and apart from using microsoft word, up until now, I have not been able to find a program to open files like these.

Now, there is another way of handling ".docx" files, and that is through the online service "ThinkFree";. To be able to use the ".docx" files I go to ThinkFree, open the ".docx" file and re-save it to my desktop as an ordinary ".doc" file, then I can open it with my usual Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

It is handy to look in the document as displayed in ThinkFree and to then understand if there is any change when it is saved as a ".doc" file. Most of the files I have opened and saved as a ".doc" have been OK, but one document, for some reason scrambled the document when saved in a ".doc" format.

However, it should be OK most of the time.