I was to reach forward and open the door for her

[Freddyben]

Hey everybody I got stumped on this above sentence (in the title of this thread) and wonder what is difference between this one and "I had to reach forward and open the door for her". It seems to me to be squarilly the same meaning but there must be something different, no ? 
And oh Thomas, is my paragraph correct ? thank you very much.

[mamour]

I got stumped and reach forward what that means?I looked to wordreference and I found nothing

[Bettina]

I was to reach forward - I did it......
I had to reach forward -  I must or plutôt "j'étais obligé....

I don't think that's right but I tried to find the difference.

[Freddyben]

I imagine that "I was to" is more literary than "I had to". But what is the difference in the meaning if there is one ?
Hi Mamour, about "I got stumped" unfortunatly even wordreference not always gives all the significations for a word even though it says (for the verb stump) : mélanger (rendre perplexe, confondre), I'm rather positive that "I got stumped on this sentence" stands for "Je me suis fait collé par cette phrase" but maybe I sould have just said "I stumped on this sentence". For "to reach forward" I would simply translate by "tendre le bras en avant".
As always wait for Thomas' answer to be sure.

[Thomas]

You're right, Freddyben -- the difference between them is more of the level of formality than anything else. The only other difference that I see is that saying "I was to reach forward" definitely indicates that someone else told me to do it, whereas "I had to reach forward" might be something someone else told me to do, but it might not.

And you were right, we say "to get stumped" on/about something. If you just say "I stumped" then you are stumping someone else "I stumped my friend with a difficult question"

Hey everybody I got stumped on the above sentence (in the title of this thread) and wonder what is the difference between this one and "I had to reach forward and open the door for her". It seems to me to be squarilly the same meaning but there must be something different, no ?

But I have no idea what "squarilly" means It looks like squirrely to me. I'm assuming you mean something from "square" -- do you mean "exactly" or something similar? Saying "squarely" sounds British to me, perhaps it's just a word I don't know.

[Freddyben]

Oh squarely is an English word, I just saw on wordreference but it's not matching what I meant, in fact it's "exactly" I should've put but I wanted something slightly stronger, so I wrote randomly "squarely" thinking it was OK (shame on me ).
But anyway thank you again for this crystal clear information, this is precious to me and I appreciate it.