MS Word and MS PowerPoint are required to open those attachments.
You "might" find that Appleworks will open the word documents if you save the word document a folder somewhere, open Appleworks and then go to file/open and go to that file.
There is a PowerPoint Viewer, produced by MS that allows you to view PowerPoint presentations. It's free. Just Google for PowerPoint viewer for Mac.
MS Office for OS X 2004 will run you a chunk but if you have a student ID you can purchase the Student/Teacher edition for around $130. Price for Office for the PC is around the same as for the Mac.
Does this help
P
Running: OSX(Tiger)10.4.2, Safari, Mail
Using Mail (email client), I can download attachments but cannot open MS Word or MS PowerPoint attachments. What do I need to do to open these attachments?
Thank you

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