The suggestion to get the original sender to re-save is best. Although I have the most recent Office Mac 2008 (and OS 10.6.4) I have made the older Word 97-2004.doc version as my default for saving, since lots of people haven't felt the need to give more money to Microshite to upgrade. I've not found anything I've needed to do in the new version that I couldn't do in the old, so far. Same for Excel.

Tom Bliss said Erm I'm not sure about this, but someone told me you just delete the x (i.e make it .doc) and it opens in word for mac. I _think_ I tried it and it worked.

Yes, I think I tried it before I was gullible enough to upgrade, and I seem to remember it worked too!