Thanks to all who replied. From your emails I learned that I should be using winzip or some similar file on my computer to unzip the downloaded openoffice file. I found, through using the search facility, that for some reason no such file is on my computer. Perhaps because I had to reinstall windows recently--that's why I was downloading openoffice again--the originally-installed windows unzip program was not there.
So I solved my problem by going online and downloading a free program called CAM unzip. Worked perfectly. Thanks again for your guidance. Helped me get on the right track. Bert.
