Recently, I had a friend have problems opening a MS word document with their PC computer at home. The document had the extension .docx.

All files have a filename and then an extension: filename.extension
The document was called: course1024.docx.
.docx is the file extension for the latest version of MS Word

My friend’s computer, that uses windows Vista operating system, tried to open the document with an unzipping software. To correct this, I told my friend to do the following.

1. save the .docx file on your desktop
2. right click on the file and choose properties
3. on the general tab, click the change  button beside the “opens with”
4. hopefully Word will be one of the options, if not you will have to browse to it.
   look under programs, Microsoft Office, winword

Now, whenever you try to open a file with the extension .docx, it will open in MS Word. You only have to do this once. The computer will remember what software to use when opeing a file with the extension.docx.