Word Message: Microsoft Word isn’t your default program for viewing and editing documents

By Zubair Alexander

- On March 27, 2019

Have you have seen the following message in Microsoft Word? It's not really an error or warning, it's just a notification that something in your settings may require your attention. It also hints that the issue is related to the file types associated with the Word program.

Microsoft Word isn't your default program for viewing and editing documents. Do you want to select the file types that Word should open? I didn't see this message when I logged in locally to a Windows 10 computer. However, after I joined the computer to the domain, I saw this message on the new domain-joined profile. I went to Settings -> Apps -> Default apps -> Choose default apps by file types, but Word was associated with all the file types I want. If you see file types .DOCMHTML File and .DOS File in that section, just ignore them because they are not Word files.

I then went to the hyperlink Set defaults by app, as shown below. I wanted to make sure that the default for my apps were properly configured.

I looked for Word in the list and clicked Manage.

I noticed that all file types were properly associated with Microsoft Word. I had manually associated the Rich Text Format (.rtf) with WordPad because I don't want that associated with Word. I noticed that as soon as I associated .rtf with Word again and then restarted Word, the message disappeared. However, that's not what I wanted. I want .rtf files to be associated with WordPad so whenever I double-click a file with .rtf extension it opens in WordPad, not in Word. I reverted my Rich File Format (.rtf) files back to WordPad.

I restarted Word and simply turned off the message by selecting the box Don't show this message again and clicked Yes.

I didn't do this in the first place because I wanted to make sure that the Word is properly configured as the default program for viewing and editing documents. Once I have confirmed that Word was properly configured and the file type associations were all correct, I decided to turn the message off because I knew it was safe to do so. Just so you know, this action is exactly the same as going to File -> Options -> General tab and then clearing the option under the Startup type options section for Tell me if Microsoft Word isn't the default program for viewing and editing documents.

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