can you please answer the questions when asked if not we have no way to know how to answer you. We asked do you have any version of Microsoft office on that computer now??? you can also try downloading open office from here OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 click where it says download now a new page opens and a pop up box with the actual download will come up for you to save to your pc. but I think maybe the easiest way for you might be to just use an online conversion tool like this no need to install any programs just do it online DOCX Convert Office 2007 or this Zamzar.com - Free online file conversion zamzar is my fave. or you can now use Google docs to open them Google Docs

I just wanted to update my post that my computer is back to norm. The PDF issue was solved using the download Raven suggested and works fine. Still can't open PDFs w/ Adobe Reader, but the other program does the job and evidently my clients can open them via email as well which was the important part. The jumping cursor issue was quite baffling. After doing many days of research, I found that the issue goes back to the early 2000s on all kinds of 'puters. I couldn't type anything without the damn cursor jumping around constantly and inserting text where it didn't belong. BUT, finally, it dawned on my when I did my OS re-install and downloaded the touchpad mouse driver (though I use an external one via the USB), I didn't choose that I had a 32bit system. It had automatically loaded the 64bit driver which was apparently causing the issue. Duh!! It took me 2 weeks to figure it out, but I did. No jumping cursor and no more crashing computer. She's quite speedy now. I appreciate everyone's help.

Thanks, both of you, for your suggestions. Saving the source formatting didn't help, so I tried "match destination formatting" instead. That did move the words out of the margins, but it left those margins much too large. Perhaps because the original files were in Courier, and Times New Roman is my default font in Word. But, if I change it back to Courier, all of the problems return. I also tried "keep text only," but it seemed to have the same results as "match destination formatting." I also clicked on the paragraph symbol that shows all the background stuff, and there appear to be a lot of dotted lines in these documents that I don't recall seeing in any of my regular Word documents. Is there any way to get rid of those? (As these files are already saved on my computer as text files, saving one again in Notepad didn't help.)

Compatibility packs? http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3 =========== Or download LibreOffice, open the file and save as the MSWord file format of your choice. You will mess up some formatting, but it's no worse than the usual problems of having multiple Word versions used on a single document.