My Email attachments never open in Adobe Reader!

Hi, my name is Tina.

I'm not to computer savvy. But my problem is always when I get emails with attachments ending with ,docx.

I got to download them and when I go to open them it always says:

Adobe Reader could not open .docx because it is either not a supported file type or bc the file has been damaged for example it was sent as an email attachment and wasn't correctly decoded..

It automatically open these files in Adobe PDF, These attachments come from my daughter's school and other organizations.

Is there anyway someone could help me and walk me through this process? It just might be that my settings are set up wrong.

I have a Dell laptop with Window 7.

Please HELP????

Thank you so much in advance!

I will be off the computer until tomorrow until then Have a Great Weekend

Tina