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I think Microsoft had a policy of automatically allowing any upgraded application (Word) to open legacy format files into the upgraded format. It then saved the document in the new format.
CoPilot/Bing is not much help. I asked it "In Windows 11, how to convert Word DOC to Word DOCX?" The first answer is "Open the .doc file in Microsoft Word."
The DOC file will not open. They are identified as Media files and won't open.
Any suggestions?
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
If you send me a copy of a document, referencing this thread in the covering email message, I will investigate the issue.
If double-clicking doesn't work, start Word and open the file via File > Open > Browse. If the older file still refuses to open, it may be damaged, or it really is some file type that Word can't handle.