My saved documents are no longer the W icons but orange icons that I can't open. Please help.

Anonymous
2013-09-11T14:30:26+00:00

My saved word documents no longer have the W icon but rather an orange icon that I can't open.  Spent 10 mins phoning Microsoft at great expense.  No answer Any help?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments No comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2013-09-12T10:58:51+00:00

Please try to uninstall Microsoft office 2010 from program list in Programs and features. It will appear there with most recent date of installation. After uninstall of that application, Microsoft office 2010 Starter should work as before the update.

*This will not uninstall your office starter

Detailed steps:

  1. Click Start, then click Uninstall program if you cannot see it click “Programs and features”
  2. Click Control Panel
  3. Click “Uninstall program” if you do not see it click “Programs and features”
  4. On the program list locate “Microsoft office 2010” not “Microsoft office 2010 Starter”
  5. Right click Microsoft office 2010 and click on uninstall option
  6. When uninstall finishes restart windows

Was this answer helpful?

10+ people found this answer helpful.
0 comments No comments

169 additional answers

Sort by: Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2013-09-12T22:55:36+00:00

    Same happened to my, it's been hellish!!  anyway,      right click (once) on the (now)orange document  icon,  go to "open with" and left click (once) on  "Microsoft client virtualization handler"  and that opens the document

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  2. Anonymous
    2013-09-12T23:26:11+00:00

    I did this and the icons turned blue again, and word documents will open, but now excel wont open. Does any one know what i should tell the excel to open with to make it work?

    Also why did microsoft do this??????????????????? I never asked for microsoft office to be installed on my computer and I have a lot of work to do tonight

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  3. Anonymous
    2013-09-13T00:54:37+00:00

    If i tell excel to open with the Microsoft client virtualization handler the icon turns a weird gray color and will not open.

    If I tell it to open with the Microsoft application virtualization  DDE launcher the excel icon returns to normal, when I double click the icon I get an error that says " there was a problem sending the command to this program" if I double click it again anyway it opens the excel file.

    Others have stated that all they did was tell it to open with the microsoft client virtualization handler, but thats not working for me. I'm using windows 7

    Microsoft client virtualization handler does however make the word program work normally.

    Will microsoft release a patch to fix this problem they have caused??????? I'm seriously annoyed that they allowed this patch to go out with out consideration as to how it would effect computers running office starter. Was I just supposed to buy office 2010 to solve the problem microsoft really?????????

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  4. Anonymous
    2013-09-13T01:28:59+00:00

    Oh great.  so glad that I found this site and problem is solved according to directions given.  Thanks

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments