Thank you, Paul: I upgraded from 10.6.8 directly to 10.8.5 based on the listed requirements that said that was okay. It never occurred to me to purchase 10.7.- in the middle. I have run the disk utility and repaired permissions and also verified the disk. Office 2008 has been on my computer since I bought the MacBook Pro in 2009 and it's never been moved from the original folder. I just tried removing the preferences IAW instructions I found online to see if it might be a matter of a damaged file and that had no effect on the problem. Everything has been working fine for about five years with 10.6.8 and Word 2008. The only reason I did the OS upgrade was to try another application which needed it. But I need a functioning Word a lot more than anything new, and as soon as I get up the nerve to do it, I'm going back to 10.6.8 and forget about upgrading. I realize that's a dinosaur attitude, but I should have known better than to mess with something that wasn't broken. Thanks again for taking the time to assist. Tosh