Q I'm having trouble reading an important file that was created in Word 97. Of course I have Word 95! Is there a utility that will help? I don't want to donate another $140 to Microsoft.

A Microsoft offers a free viewer application which will let you view (but not edit) Word 97 files. This utility is particularly handy for users who need to view Word documents but don't have the Word application (rumour has it there are still some folks out there who haven't succumbed to the Microsoft juggernaut!)

The Word viewer comes in various flavours, and obviously it's important to install the version appropriate to your system. Users of Windows 95 and NT need the 32-bit version (wd97vwr32.exe), while 3.x users should install the 16-bit version (wdvw9716.exe). You can download these files from www.microsoft.com/word/internet/viewer/ or from our cover CD.

To edit Word 97 documents in an earlier version of Word you will need Microsoft's format converter. The file wrd97cnv.exe can be used to install the converter on both 16-bit and 32-bit versions of Windows. Although this utility does save you the expense of upgrading to Word 97, note that certain formatting features unique to the current version of Word may be lost when documents are converted to an earlier format. The Word 97 converter can be found on our cover CD and at support.microsoft.com/download/support/mslfiles/wrd97cnv.exe.