WordPad is a very basic word processing program included free of charge with every version of Microsoft Windows sold since Windows 95. While WordPad does offer basic document editing capabilities, if you want to add tables to your document or run a spell check, you will need to convert your WordPad document to Microsoft Office Word. In Windows XP, Microsoft removed the ability to save WordPad documents as Word documents, but it is still possible to open WordPad files with Word. To convert a WordPad file to any version of Microsoft Office Word, follow these simple steps.
Step 1
Open Microsoft Office Word on your computer by clicking on a desktop shortcut or by clicking the "Start" button, selecting "All Programs," clicking on the "Microsoft Office" folder and selecting "Microsoft Word."
Step 2
Click "File," and select "Open." At the bottom of the dialog box, you will see a field titled, "Files of type." Click on the arrow to the right of the drop-down box, and select "All Files (.)."
Step 3
Browse through your documents until you locate the WordPad document that you want to convert to Word. Double-click on the file name to open it.
Step 4
With the WordPad file open in Word, click "File," and select "Save As." At the bottom of the dialog box, you will see a field titled, "Save as type." Click on the arrow to the right of the drop-down box, and select "Word Document (.doc or .docx)."
Tip
You may need to adjust the formatting of your document before saving it as a Word file.