What to do if you can't open an email attachment ...

"Why can't I open it? "

So you have recieved an important file or document in your email and no matter what you do, it just won't open. Worse yet, it is a Word document, or PDF and you have Word. According to "Murphy's Law" the amount of time that you will have to solve the problem will be inversely proportional to how important it is to get it opened immediately...

Well, there is good news... In most cases it is simply a matter of upgrading the application used to open the file. You can usually tell what program you will need by looking at the file extension. The File Extension is the three to four letters that follow the dot. For example if you received a file called Something.docx, docx is the file extension.

Computers use file extensions to determine what application is needed to open any particular file.

If you can not see the file extension, you can enable them by going to Start > Control Panel > Folder Options and then remove the checkmark from the "Hide Extensions of Known File Types" option.

Here is a list of common file extensions and the programs needed to open them:

.Doc and .Docx	Microsoft Word	A free upgrade is needed to open .docx files in versions of word older than Word 2007. You can download it here.
.Pdf	Adobe Acrobat Reader	If you have problems with this type of file, you may have an outdated or corrupt version
.jpg, .gif, .bmp, .tiff	Anything that will open images.	If you don't have something suitable then try Picasa
.psd	Adobe Photoshop	This one is a bit pricey. You can find more information here.

Good luck & I hope you make that deadline...