Microsoft Word has taken over!

I hope I'm posting this in the right place.

Microsoft Word has suddenly taken over all of my documents. I prefer Open Office, and don't want to use Word, but want to keep it around. I've searched through Preferences on both, and can't find a way to make Open Office my default choice. Even if I open a document with OO, the next time I open it, Word takes over again. Is there a solution other than deleting Word? This is a serious nuisance!

Moved here to the correct forum.

Select a document, right click on it, select open with, choose Open Office and also place a check in the box below that says "Always Open With". That will change the default back to OO from Word.

chscag said:

Moved here to the correct forum.

Select a document, right click on it, select open with, choose Open Office and also place a check in the box below that says "Always Open With". That will change the default back to OO from Word.

Click to expand...

Yes, but having to do that to every document is quite tedious. Word has been over-riding that anyway.

You only have to do that once, not for every document.

Cheers ... McBie

You only need to do that one time to any one document and it will take effect for all documents. Be sure to do it both for *.doc and *.docx.

How are you saving these files? Default format for Word...or default format for OO?

- Nick

Select a document, right click on it, select open with, choose Open Office and also place a check in the box below that says "Always Open With". That will change the default back to OO from Word.

Click to expand...

If you insert "Get Info" right after "right click on it" then you'll get an option to change the application for the document and there will be a box to check to Change All.

All of you have excellent suggestions for which I thank you. I have carefully tried all of the above, but Word is overriding all of them. I have used OO for years, and save all of my docs in OO; I only use Word for demo purposes when I teach. This problem started with the Word update that occurred today. Am going to try restarting my MBA one more time...

rainbowcat said:

All of you have excellent suggestions for which I thank you. I have carefully tried all of the above, but Word is overriding all of them. I have used OO for years, and save all of my docs in OO; I only use Word for demo purposes when I teach. This problem started with the Word update that occurred today. Am going to try restarting my MBA one more time...

Click to expand...

In the extremely rare instances where the Get Info method hasn't worked to assign a certain file type to a particular application, this free utility has done the job:

RCDefaultApp (free)
http://www.rubicode.com/Software/RCDefaultApp/

___________________________________________

Randy B. Singer *• *Attorney at Law*
Mac OS X Routine Maintenance* •**http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html
___________________________________________

Thanks Randy! After the third restart some of the docs open in OO, and this can take care of the rest.

chscag said:

Moved here to the correct forum.

Select a document, right click on it, select open with, choose Open Office and also place a check in the box below that says "Always Open With". That will change the default back to OO from Word.

Click to expand...

I was not given that option; 1-7-23

Rick22 said:

I was not given that option; 1-7-23

Click to expand...

Welcome, Rick22, to the forum.

Your post was pretty cryptic. Can you give us a bit more information? Like, what Mac, what version of macOS, what did you do that you had no option and what does the 1-7-23 have to do with it? What option are you talking about?

Rick22 said:

I was not given that option; 1-7-23

Click to expand...

The red banner above your post will identify the date posted. No need to repeat that. (Look at the post above yours.)

You are correct that Always Open With does not appear when you right click on a highlighted document. But, if you highlight a document and choose Get Info, there will be an Open With pane in that window. Expand that, choose the application (even if already shown) and then the Change All button will become active.

It might be the case that back in 2016 when that advice was given, Always Open With was an option after a right click.