A default installation does not prevent third-party addins that may already be present on your system from interacting with Word. Some addins that might have not caused problems with Word 2003 won't necessarily play nicely with Word 2010. You should be able to see if any addins are installed by starting Word and going to File|Options|Addins. You could also try starting Word in safe mode (hold down the Ctrl key while starting), then seeing if the navigation works OK. Safe mode disables all addins, templates, etc.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

No go, Paul - even in safe mode I cannot save as or open a doc in another folder than the My Docs folder. Assuming a problem with my Windows install, if I could find out what has changed between 2003 and 2010 in the way the prog uses the explorer window/gui I might be able to track this down?

I really don't think it's anything configurable with either version of Office. It may just be that Office 2010's code is more susceptible to OS faults that Office 2003 ignored.

Sad to say, it's starting to look like an OS reinstal might be required.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

I don't want all the bother. Thanks for your time, Paul. I'll revert to 2003.