Wordpad to Word

Hi Clive

Word and Wordpad share a lot of the same file types, if your Word documents are opening in Wordpad, then the Word file associations are broken

Open the Settings App (gear icon on your Start Menu)

Go to Apps - Default Apps

At the bottom, click 'Set defaults by App'

Scroll down to find Word in the list of Apps and give it all its defaults

If that does not work for you go back to Default Apps and click 'Set Defaults by File Type'

Scroll don to find docx files and set that to open with Word

Finally if none of the above works for you, in the settings App, go to Apps, scroll down to find Microsoft Office, select that, choose change/modify, then choose Repair - Online Repair . . .

In the File Explorere, right click on one of the files and click on Open with and then one choose another App and in the dialog that opens, if Word is not highlighted under Keep using this app, select Word, (if necessary click on More apps to locate Word) and then check the box for "Always use this app to open .docx files".

You did an Office Repair AND used the "Set Defaults" tool and DOCX still defaults to Wordpad?

That is definitely funky.

Sorry, I don't know what else to suggest. Those 2 fixes cover the gambit as far as I know.

FYI: we all see all replies on the question. So you could have just as easily submitted a single reply detailing that you had followed all of our suggestions and we would have seen it.

The point of Wordpad is that it is a simple document editor that has been included (free) with Windows since the 1990's. It has more word processing features than NotePad, an even older "text" editor program. So if you can't use Office for some reason, you can fall back to WordPad.

The Word files are not "converted" to WordPad. The problem is that for some reason WIndows has been told to use WordPad to open DOCX files.  That is the Windows Default File Association.

As suggested, you can set just the one file type using the "Set defaults by App" tool, but I strongly prefer using the Office Repair option, if one file association is off, there is a good chance others are also. So by doing an Office Repair, you reset ALL file types used by all Office programs in one step. Doing a repair should have no negative effects on anything in your Office experience.

Repair Office 365 / 2019 / 2016 / 2013 / 2010

https://account.microsoft.com/

Here are some similar articles describing how to do Office Repairs for various versions of Office and Windows. Pick the one that easiest for you to understand

Repair Office 365 / 2019-2010 on Win 10-Vista

https://support.office.com/en-US/Article/Repair-an-Office-application-7821d4b6-7c1d-4205-aa0e-a6b40c5bb88b

Repair Office 2013/2016 in Pictures (My WIKI) 

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/wiki/office\_365hp-office\_install/repair-office-365-in-pictures/f09d64b7-cfcc-4d07-be0b-0c429682d01a 

Setup command-line options reference for Office 2013 including repair  

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc178956.aspx

Alternate method of Repair- Fixing Word

http://wordribbon.tips.net/T001232\_Fixing\_Word.html

Need to make sure that Word is installed correctly from the original installation CDs? You can do it by using a command built directly into Word.

The difference is that WordPad is included with Windows, so that it requires no extra cost. WordPad can open Word documents, but WordPad only supports a small fraction of the functionality in Word.

As Dave wrote, what you need to do is change the file associations so that Word is the default for *.doc and *.docx files, or you can try repairing your Office installation.