Word cannot open this file the file format does not match the file extension (C:\users\...\spreadsheet_contents.docx)

Question

how can I change this file to a doc. file

Answer 1

Hello Carol,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Office Community.

Follow the steps mentioned below to change the extension of a document from *.docx to *.doc and see if it helps:

1. Open Windows Explorer and on click Viewtab and clear File name extensions checkbox.

Note: Ensure to check File name extensions after the troubleshooting process.

2. Right click on the document and select Rename.
3. Now change the extension of the document from *.docx to *.doc and then try opening it.

Hope the above information helps. Reply with the result and I'll be happy to help you further.

Thank you.

Answer 2

I have the same issue: A file saved as a .docx that gives the same error when opening in Word 2013. I changed the extension to .zip.  It is not a zip file. I changed the extension to .doc and it fails to open with message:    Microsoft Word cannot open this file because it is an unsupported file type. Then I changed the extension to .txt and opened it in notepad.  It appears very much to be a .doc file.  The last line contains the following: <ds:datastoreItem ds:itemID="{A87D756C-51E1-4CB4-ADBE-8F921D4509B4}" xmlns:ds="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/customXml"><ds:schemaRefs><ds:schemaRef ds:uri="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/bibliography"/></ds:schemaRefs></ds:datastoreItem>                                          
þÿ   ÿÿÿÿ›Luôõd@KŠôg—2¬   Microsoft Word Document     MSWordDoc    Word.Document.12 ô9²q (BTW, Opening another working .doc file I have shows something similar in the last line: <ds:datastoreItem ds:itemID="{D6CCB430-7B4E-4E48-8A3A-2FC8E3D09CF8}" xmlns:ds="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/customXml"><ds:schemaRefs><ds:schemaRef ds:uri="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/bibliography"/></ds:schemaRefs></ds:datastoreItem>                                          
þÿ   ÿÿÿÿ      À      F    Microsoft Word 97-2003 Document     MSWordDoc    Word.Document.8) The file started from a .dot file, and at some point was saved as a .docx by a user.  We could go through all our .dot templates and upgrade them to a newer version, but there's a lot of work involved, so would prefer (in the short term) to avoid what appears to be a weird mix of versions happening. Any ideas?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           EDIT: Found that the file was saved as a document and not a zip file. (i.e. As detailed above, changing the extension to .zip didn't reveal a zipped folder structure and the text of the file (when opened in Notepad) contained Word.Document in the last line. But it wasn't just any ordinary document. It was an 'auto-save' recovery document. To restore it, I changed the extension to .asd, placed the file in Word's auto-recovery location and then opened Word, File->Open, navigated to the auto-recovery folder (which you can find in Options), showed all files (*.*) and simply opened it. Not sure how it ended up in that format, so not sure how common this would be.

Answer 3

Hello Carol,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Office Community.

Follow the steps mentioned below to change the extension of a document from *.docx to *.doc and see if it helps:

1. Open Windows Explorer and on click View tab and clear File name extensions checkbox.

Note: Ensure to check File name extensions after the troubleshooting process.

2. Right click on the document and select Rename.
3. Now change the extension of the document from *.docx to *.doc and then try opening it.

Hope the above information helps. Reply with the result and I'll be happy to help you further.

Thank you.

Hi There, I just tried this and am getting another error message:  "Word cannot open the file because it is an unsupported file type

Answer 4

how can I change this file to a doc. file

Hi Microsoft Community,

I was able to fix my corrupted .docx file by uploading it to Google doc and redownload it in .docx format.

Try it out.

Answer 5

Hello Daniel,

 I  faced the same error, I tried the same steps but it can NOT work, can I have further assistance on this issue