Hi Charles
I appreciate all of your help and time. I did follow up on every suggestion/link that you sent and nothing is working!

You asked me what happens when I double-click on a word document. Interestingly, it opens in Word like it should. The frustration is that the doc icons resemble folders which is what is driving me batty. I have hundreds of folders that now look like directories and I have to scan carefully for the one file I need.

I'm going to remove Word completely and all traces of it and reinstall it. If I can get my hands on a more recent version then I'll do that. In the meantime it looks like I just have to work with what I have until I can fix this mess.


Thanks again.


Derek