At times in Microsoft Office, when you try opening a file, or you open an attachment in email, the file does not opens in the program that you expected.

For example, a Microsoft Word document might not open in MS Word but in a program other than Word. This issue occurs because file associations for the program are incorrect. In order to solve the issue, correct the file associations for the program by repairing Office or the Office program, or by using the regserver command.

Note– Ensure that you have the accurate program installed for the file association. This can be verified by viewing the file name extension.

Method 1: Repair Office or the Office program

When you repair Office, the accurate file association will re-associate with the corresponding Office program. To repair Office or the Office program, follow the steps given below:

• Close all Office programs and halt all anti-viruses to stop
• Click Start, click Run, type appqiz.cpl then press ENTER
• Click Office or the Office program and then click Change/Remove and the Setup will start automatically.
• Click Repair Office (or Word Repair) in Setup program

Note– The Setup program performs the following functions:

• Checks the installed files
• Replaces or installs any files from an earlier version of Office that are the wrong size are damaged or are missing
• After repairing Office or the Office program, turn on the anti-virus software that you turned off

Method 2: Use the regserver command to re-register the Office program

The regserver command forces the Office program to re-register itself and then exit. Utilize this command whenever you want to rewrite all the program’s registry keys and re-associate the program together with the appropriate program files. In order to do this, and to write the correct file association information in the Windows registry, the steps are mentioned below:

Note– The program.exe is a placeholder for the program file for the program that you want to re-register. If you installed Office to another location, then use that path.

• Exit the program that you want to re-register
• Click Start, click Run, type program.exe /unregserver in the Open box and press ENTER
• Now click Start, click Run, type program.exe /regserver in the Open box and press ENTER

Although this method does not works for Microsoft Outlook. In such situation you can opt effective and efficient data recovery software for MS Office file recovery.