Error Message saving Word to PDF

Question

Unable to save a 2010 Word document as a PDF. When clicking save as PDF, I get this error message: "could not open file. No program is associated with this file type".

Answer 1

If you have the check box for "Open file after publishing" checked (as it is by default), then the problem may be that there is no file association for the .pdf extension. You'll need to correct this outside Word. Find another PDF on your system (in My Computer), right-click on it, and choose Open With > Choose Program...

In the Choose Program dialog, select Adobe Reader, and check the box for "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file." Click OK. You can then close the PDF you've just opened in Adobe Reader and try again to create a PDF in Word.

Answer 2

Well, that's sort of good news/bad news. I'm glad you found a (temporary) workaround, but it does seem to indicate that my initial assessment was correct, and it should be possible to solve the problem entirely. Perhaps you would need to restart Word and possibly even Windows for the file association you set to take effect. You might try again after rebooting Windows to see if anything has changed.

Answer 3

Thanks so much! I followed your instructions exactly & unfortunately, the error message still popped up. So, I decided to go ahead & uncheck the default "Open file after publishing". The error message no longer pops up ... the PDF is created successfully and opens when I click on it.