Converting Files for Programs You Don't Have
By Mark Frauenfelder April 02, 2008
Someone emailed you a Microsoft* Word* document but you don't have Word, so you can't open it. What can you do, short of forking over a few hundred bucks for a copy of Word?
It can be frustrating to receive a document that you can't open or edit. If someone sends you a Microsoft Word file and you don't have Word, it doesn't make sense to buy a copy just to open it. And it's inconvenient to have to e-mail the file to a friend who owns a copy, just to convert it into a text file so you can read it.
Fortunately, you have several choices for dealing with this common problem:
If you just want to open and read or print a Word document, you can download a free Word Viewer application from Microsoft's Web site: support.microsoft.com/kb/891090.
If you want to edit the document, you can sign up for Google* Docs, which has a free online word processor that's compatible with Microsoft Word: .
The third option is Zamzar* (www.zamzar.com), a free file conversion Web site. To use Zamzar, in Step 1, click the Browse button to select a file on your hard drive. Zamzar will figure out what kind of file it is and ask you to choose the file format to convert it to. For example, it can convert a Word document into a plain text file, which can be opened with any text editor or word processor, or it can convert it into a PDF (Portable Document Format) document, which retains the formatting of the Word document, so you can view and print it as it appeared to the person who e-mailed it to you.
Zamzar will not only help you open Word documents, it will also convert image and video documents into different file formats, which is handy when someone e-mails you a file that you can't open. This free online file conversion service can take almost any file you throw at it and convert it into a format your computer can open.
