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Open Old Document Formats [How To]

Posted by Rich On June 15, 20090 Comments
delicous Open Old Document Formats [How To]

As software changes, some file formats a deprecated and, if you don’t convert these files, you may find you simply cannot open them anymore. There are a few things you can do to remedy this problem, learn what you can do, to open an old file format, in this guide.

Opening an Old File Format

The usual suspects are document files that are no longer supported. If you have a document file in an unsupported format, this guide may help you open your document once again.

Open the File with a Program You Have

The first thing you should try is see if you can open the file with all your available programs. Simply do the following:

  1. Double click on the file
  2. Choose Select a program from a list of installed programs
  3. Uncheck Always use the selected program to open this kind of file

    Open Old File Formats - 2

  4. Choose a program to try and open the document with
  5. Repeat steps 1-4 until you’ve tried all your previously-installed programs

Use Zamzar to Convert Your File

If you don’t have a program capable of opening the file, the next step should be to use zamzar.com. Zamzar gets you to upload your file and then they’ll email you the converted file.

Open Old File Formats - 3

Download a Program to Open Your Old Files

If the previous two methods of using current programs and using Zamzar don’t work, you have one more option. There are some programs out there, which are designed to open old file formats. Simply go to Google and search for “open .old format” (replacing .old with the extension of the file in question.) I’ve had lots of success with this method.



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