NOTE: If you are using an older version of Microsoft Word, you might see an 'Enable' menu with 'Original' selected. The steps to take for working through this error are to 'Recover Text from any file' from within Microsoft Word.ġ - In Microsoft Word, click the File menu, click Open.Ģ - Navigate the Open location to where the document is on your computer from within the Word Open dialog box.ģ - At the bottom of the Open dialog box, click the Options button so you see the Open: Original pop-down menu at the bottom-right corner.

So they are security risks that should be avoided, if possible. The code used to open and save the older formats have vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. Causeįile Block prevents outdated file types from opening and causes your file to open in Protected View and disables the Save and Open features. Some older versions of Word documents cannot be opened in Word 2016 or newer. This article applies to those trying to open Microsoft Word documents from old versions of Microsoft Office. When opening an old Word document, a newer version of Microsoft Word may report 'Error: uses a file type that is blocked from opening in this version'.

Word 2007 to word 2016 upgrade