Word is, Word is more than I need

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pronker - 23 Jul 2008 17:51 GMT

I installed Office Suite, Home/Student version, on my laptop (XP) to help my
son's schoolwork before he got his own computer. Now I want to uninstall it
as I really only need WordPad, but all my files originally in WordPad can now
also be opened in Word and IE and their icons have changed to a 'W'. If I
uninstall the suite, will my old files be injured in some way?

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Terry Farrell - 23 Jul 2008 18:12 GMT

Probably they will be reassociated automatically with WordPad. If not, you
can do that manually in Windows Explorer by shift+right-clicking on a
WordPad file and choosing Open With. Then make sure that the checkbox at the
bottom (always use this application to open these types of files or
something like that) is checked and choose WordPad.

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Terry Farrell - MSWord MVP

>I installed Office Suite, Home/Student version, on my laptop (XP) to help
>my
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> also be opened in Word and IE and their icons have changed to a 'W'. If I
> uninstall the suite, will my old files be injured in some way?

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pronker - 24 Jul 2008 17:55 GMT

> Probably they will be reassociated automatically with WordPad. If not, you
> can do that manually in Windows Explorer by shift+right-clicking on a
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
> > also be opened in Word and IE and their icons have changed to a 'W'. If I
> > uninstall the suite, will my old files be injured in some way?

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Jay Freedman - 23 Jul 2008 18:20 GMT

> I installed Office Suite, Home/Student version, on my laptop (XP) to
> help my son's schoolwork before he got his own computer. Now I want
> to uninstall it as I really only need WordPad, but all my files
> originally in WordPad can now also be opened in Word and IE and their
> icons have changed to a 'W'. If I uninstall the suite, will my old
> files be injured in some way?

No, your existing files won't be touched at all.

When you installed Office, one of the things it did was to set a registry
entry to tell Windows that Word is the application to open when you
double-click a file with a .doc extension, and another to change the icon.

When you uninstall Word, it should remove those entries, leaving WordPad as
the assigned application for those files. If that doesn't happen correctly,
it's easy to fix:

- In Windows Explorer, right-click any .doc file and choose Properties.

- In the Properties dialog, where it says what program the file opens with,
click the Change button.

- In the next dialog, select WordPad. Make sure the box for "Always use the
selected program" is checked, and click OK.

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Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
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pronker - 24 Jul 2008 17:56 GMT

> > I installed Office Suite, Home/Student version, on my laptop (XP) to
> > help my son's schoolwork before he got his own computer. Now I want
[quoted text clipped - 20 lines]
> - In the next dialog, select WordPad. Make sure the box for "Always use the
> selected program" is checked, and click OK.

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