The installation program should be changed to check for MS OFfice installation, 
and only if it's not found, it should make the choice of taking over MS Office 
files. If there is an installation of MS Office, the default should be not to 
take over MS Office files. Otherwise this is going to drive away a lot of 
novice users. The gentleman below is so nice, he registered and sent a request. 
But others may not be so nice, and they'll run away from Openoffice.org forever 
like the Desktop feature drove users away from Staroffice5.x.
=============================================================== 
Jacqueline McNally (jacqueline@decisions-and-designs.com.au) writes on 2002-12-
21 (display as raw message)  
Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 20:57:33 +0800
From: Jacqueline McNally <jacqueline@decisions-and-designs.com.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Subject: Re: [webmasters] Changes


 
Hello Tom

When you installed OpenOffice.org one of the check boxes allows you 
associate certain file types with OpenOffice.org.

To reassociate doc, xls, ppt, or anything else to a different default.

1. Open Explorer.
2. Navigate to a doc,xls, or ppt file.
3. Hold down the Shift key while right-clicking on the doc,xls, or ppt file.
4. Select "Open With"
5. Scroll down to the application that you wish to use to open this type file.
6. Before clicking OK, make sure that the check box is marked to "Always 
use this program to open this type of file."
7. Repeat for doc, xls, ppt, and anything else you wish to change.

All the best and thank you for supporting OpenOffice.org.

Regards
Jacqueline McNally
--
Australia/New Zealand Marketing Contact, OpenOffice.org
tsukusenai@openoffice.org

At 07:50 AM 12/01/2002, you wrote:
>I just today loaded and registered my downloaded version of OpenOffice 1.01.
>
>Unfortunately it has somehow gone into all of my MS Office documents and
>changed them over to OpenOffice files.
>
>I certainly did not want to have that happen.  There are many differences in
>the formatting of formulas and other changes that now make many of my files
>unusable.  Please tell me how I can reset these back to Excel and Word docs.
>
>
>I merely wanted to experiment with your product and get to know it better.
>I'm very disappointed that your program did this without my apparent
>knowledge and/or understanding.  Perhaps I missed some small print somewhere.
>
>
>Tom Flowers
>BbarKFarm@aol.com