[trebor78]

A couple of days ago I posted the following question:

"I have written several documents in Word from the Office 1997 Suite. I want to burn these documents to some CD's which I would then mail to people who are interested in the subject I have written about. One of these documents/files is about 350 pages in length.
My question is this: Some of the people who receive my CD's may not have Word installed on their computers. Will they be able to read the Word documents even though Word is not installed on their computers?"

In reply to my question I was told that Notepad which comes with all versions of Windows will open most Word files, but maybe not images and tables. Several people recommended including a portable version of OpenOffice on my CD. This is a free open-source Office suite. http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_portable

As suggested I did download "OpenOffice_Portable_2.2.1_en-us.paf.exe" to my CD, but I’m not sure what to do next. How is this used to read the Word files that are also on the CD? Should I open the file on the CD, before mailing it. Should I leave the unopened .exe file on the CD and expect it to work automatically for the person receiving the CD ? Or, should I instruct the recipient to download the .exe file to a folder in his hard drive. If the latter, should it go under Program Files or where? I’m very sorry to have to ask all these questions, but this project is very important to me and I’m trying to make it work without any major problems.

[Hybr!d]

When you run the exe it will install the software, you won't be able to use open office without doing so.

[trebor78]

Could you elaborate on this a little. I don't know much, I'm afraid. Thank you!

[Hybr!d]

Run the exe, that will install the software so you can use it.