How to re-register Word when problems crop up opening files

Article contributed by Cindy Meister

If you find that Word files do not open in the desired version of Word when you double-click them in Windows Explorer, or that when opening them from the Desktop or Explorer, a series of messages appear claiming that the file cannot be opened, such as:

Cannot open C:\My
Cannot open "Documents\The
Cannot open "Test.doc"

.. you need to re-register Word.  To fix the problem:

Word 97 and above

  1. Click Start | Run (bottom- left corner of your screen).
  2. In the Open box, type:
  3. winword /r

    and press Enter. Note that there is a space before the forward slash

Word 95

  1. Locate the file winword.reg on your system
  2. Double-click it to re-register Word