I have MS Word as part of Office 2000 with the extensions to open Word 2007 docs. Recently I was sent a document which I couldn't open. When the mouse hovered over the file icon it called itself a Word 08 doc. A coleague was able to open it using his version of Word 2007 and save as W 2000 so I could open it. In order to avoid this problem I have downloaded a trial version of Office 2007 (Home and Student) from the MS website prior to buying it. The trial version can't open this doc either. I am willing to spend the money if I can be sure it will open all Word files sent to me otherwise the old version of Word does everything I need. I do need to open these files as they are sometimes sent at weekends and evenings when the aforementioned coleague is unable to help. I will be very grateful for any help on this thanks

Apparently a Word2008 doc is from a MAC. Perhaps you could ask whoever originated these files to save in a MS Office compatible format? Which I do for Office2007 by changing its default saving to Off97 to 2003..

Thanks Mark - easier said than done these are not computer literate people which is why I need to be able to open it my self

I don't see any viewers for Word2008 from Mac to Windows, but they only just released a viewer for MACs to see Word2008 & word2007, (only released on the 9th of this month). Knowing MS, the viewer for IBM-PCs to see Word2008 from MACs will take a bit longer...

I don't have a MAC or WORD2008 to advise you on how to instruct the folks that are sending you these files on how to make them compatible. My best guess would be under "save as", look at File Type and choose a Office 2003 format..but again, I don't have a MAC..

Sorry.. Perhaps someone else here maybe able to suggest something?