Setting default Office apps won't stick

I'm trying to make MS Office X the default for my appilcations, but it keeps reverting to MS Office 2004. (I'm running 10.8.6 on a Mac Pro.)
I've had "2004" on my drive for many years and "X" for 2-3 years. I've pretty much continued to use 2004 because it's working okay and I haven't had time for something to go wrong. Now I'm trying to make X the default for Word and Excel (I never use Power Point, and I don't want to mess with Entourage right now), but I can't get it to "stick."
I tried all the usual things, and then started digging around. I realized that my System Preferences showed a plugin called "RCDefaultAPP" that I must have installed at some point. I did a search ofmy drive but couldn't find anything by that name. At this site: http://www.rubicode.com/Software/RCDefaultApp/ I found this about removing the plugin: "Drag RCDefaultApp.prefPane to the trash. Any changed LaunchServices settings remain changed, though "disabled" settings will no longer be disabled." I understand the first sentence, but I have no idea what the second sentence means. So I trashed the icon from my Preferencs Pane, ran "Repair Disk Permissions" just to play it safe, and rebooted. I'm still not getting any further.
I begin by quitting any version of Word that's open. When I open the "Get Info" windwo from a Word document (or right click on a document and choose "Open With"), it shows the icon for 2004 and says "Microsoft Word (default) (090513)." Under that, as always, it says "Use this application to open all documents like this one." From there I choose "Microsoft Word (10.0.0)" and it shows the new icon. If I close the window and launch the document, it launches "X" as expected. However, if I open another document--whether or not "X" is already open--it launches "2004." I can do this manually with any document and that document will launch "X."
So, I go back into the "Get info" window and choose "Microsoft Word (10.0.0)" again. This time, however, I click the "Change All" button. As soon as I do this, the icon reverts from "X" to "2004." It just won't stick. The same is true of Excel.
I haven't messed with any other documents or apps because I'm afraid I'll just mess something up. I've looked up "discussions" in both the Apple community and MS community....I've Googled. I don't see any other discussions about this other than the steps I've just described. I don't know what else to try.
Thoughts? Help?

Launch Services can get "temperamental" at times. For a case like you describe, if it insists of defaulting to app A when you want app B, compress app A (say as a zip file). This basically tells Launch Services "screw you - now try to find A".
So compress your Word 2004 app. The tell LS to use the newer Word. Even if it doesn't stick I think LS wil find the newer Word since none other can be found for word documents.
To compress a file, right (control) click on the file in the finder to being up its contextual menu and select Compress. A .zip file will be created. You can then trash the uncompressed original. But before you empty the trash double click the zip to recreate the expanded file and run it just to make sure the zip file was valid (this is a paranoid step). If it launches ok trash the expanded file and now you can empty the trash.

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