Opening a file from File Explorer does not open in Office 2013, Windows 7

Question

When opening a DOCX from file explorer, Office Word will open but it will not load the file unless
you open it from Office Word.

Answer 1

Hi,
Please first try to find the Word template file "Normal.dotm" and rename it to "Normal.old", then restart Microsoft Word to check the result. By default, the Normal.dotm file can be found in:
C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates
If above doesn't fix the issue, please try to force a re-register of Word in the Windows registry to check if it helps. To do this, please follow:
1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. Click Browse.
3. Locate the Office folder, click the Winword.exe file, and then click
Open. The Winword.exe file is located in the following folder by default:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15
Note The path to Winword.exe is enclosed in quotation marks.
4. Click in the Open box, and then reposition the insertion point outside of (to the right of) the closing quotation mark at the end of the path statement.
5. Type a space, followed by the /r switch:
“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\Winword.exe” /r
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Steve Fan
TechNet Community Support