Greetings Carol & list--
Responses are interspersed....
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> I got a new computer and went from Win98SE to XP. I just realized that
> ALL my old documents from Win98SE that were created in WordPad, are not
> readable now. even though I have WordPad on the new system. When I try to
> open them, I get the message:
> "Cannot load Word for Windows 6.0 files". I don't understand that, because
> I never had Word for Windows.
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When WordPad was first included as part of Windows 95, its 'native
format' was that of Word for Windows 6.0, event though it did not
have all the features of that word processor.

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> For a brief period of time, I had a program that would read Word documents. I > tried it, because people were sending me documents produced in Word that I   > couldn't read.  Now I can't  remember exactly why I uninstalled it, except that it > was affecting my existing WordPad documents in some way. I suppose it          > corrupted my Wordpad documents, although I was able to read them in           > WordPad on my old system as recently as the day I switched to the new          > system. It's only my new system that is having problems with them, even though > it has WordPad.. I KNOW the documents I'm trying to open now were created > in WordPad, because they're documents I created myself within my old >Win98SE system. AND, they're documents I need badly. (There are probably
> thousands of them covering several years.)
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I don't know whether this will be helpful or not, but have you tried right-clicking on the icon for WordPad on your new computer, clicking on properties, then the compatibility tab, then setting it to run in compatibility mode with Windows 98?
I don't know whether that will work on something as "stitched into the operating system" as WordPad is, but it's worth a try.

HTH.

Paul A. Shippert
Library Media Specialist
Margaret Brent Middle School
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and I'm hovering like a fly
waiting for the windshield on the
freeway." Genesis
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