Opening .doc files in pages

Someone has sent me a .doc word file and when i right click 'open in pages' a window is displayed reading 'the file format is invalid'. It's strange because this has never happened before and we haven't done anything different to what we normally do regarding opening .doc files etc.
It doesn't open in text edit either. Does anyone have any work around? Free word software anywhere on the internet?
Really need some help with this, hours of work has gone into this file we can't open!! And now it might be lost!
Cheers,
Jamie McIntyre

moviemaniac2 wrote:
Really need some help with this, hours of work has gone into this file we can't open!! And now it might be lost!
The simple soluce would be to ask the author for a document using a format which you will be able to read.
A message which I like to send is: +"Your xyz.doc document is not recognized as a standard format on my machine so it was deliberately deleted. If you wish that I read it's contents, use an other format. Don't try with PowerPoint, it would be trashed too."+
Is it too complicated?
My guess is that the document uses the most recent .doc format. If I'm right, as thisformat was not defined when Pages 3 was built, the described behavior is not surprising.
I don't know the details of this file format.
You may send it to my mailbox, I will be glad to look at its internals. (the readable contents is not what I'm interested to.
Click my blue name to get my mailbox address.
Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE jeudi 19 juin 2008 16:37:53)

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Message was edited by: deschutter

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Message was edited by: j.mercer

Opening .doc files in pages

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