Opening old Word files

I have copied from diskettes some old Word files that show on my Mac as being Word files (the icon has the blue 'a' in the middle, and the have the .doc suffix), and if I click on 'Get Info' it says they are Word files, but I can't open them. If I click on them I get the window that asks what I want to convert it from and none of them work. These docs are from 1989 and 1990, so somewhat ancient but important to me. Anybody got any ideas?

DufusKerrang,
"If I click on them"
Because newer genreations of software build in certain unwanted automated features, you are better off opening a file from within a program instead of relying on shortcuts. Make backup copies of the files you want to open. Put them into a test folder. Open the open the version of Word you want to work with. Use the "open" option in the file menu and follow the options. Try several options and see which one gives the cleanest result.
If you have an older Mac that will run Word 2001, use it instead of the latest version. Word 2004 will crash OS X predictably and require restarting you computer. Avoid it. Newer software alters the icon of a file to show the newer software logo, even if you did not want the icon altered. It makes it harder to quickly identify older files created by older versions.
The assumption is that 1989 files were in Word 3. They should still be easily recognized but start in the destination program to open them. We have numerous versions of Word starting with v.1 on floppies so we could test options for which files will open on an OS X machine.
Ji˜m

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