If you feel the problem is that the file attributes were changed to 'read only', in Windows Explorer you can right click on a file and, through 'properties, change the attributes to eliminate the 'read only' attribute. If that solves the problem, you can change the attributes on all the affected files. There are ways to do this as a group of files, but the last time I did a group was in the DOS days and I'm not sure how anymore. Tom Mayer Cheetah, All my documents are .doc, and always have been, and when I go into file types, it has .doc set as the extension for WordPad, so that looks ok. Once you install the Word Viewer on your system, you can no longer edit any of your documents, so it seems to me that it changes them. I can't imagine why anyone would want to install it. I got rid of it right away, once I saw that it basically turned them into 'read only'. I have DSL and O.O. downloaded fast enough. I think the problem was that I didn't have Java. Since I downloaded that, one of my other problems resolved. One that will probably be posted here. I submitted it yesterday, but it hasn't come through yet, but it's resolved now. So, I'm back to square one with the documents problem, I guess. Carol Hanson "Hold No Punches.." Rode brings you great shareware/freeware programs with his honest opinions in this weekly column. http://freepctech.com/rode