I was having the exact same issue. Annoyed the heck out of me.

Check out this link: http://www.withinwindows.com/2008/08...dows-part-one/

The actual solution is in part two of the above link.

The poster appears to have correctly identified the problem as a legacy DDE issue and shows how to fix it with a bit of straightforward registry editing.

Edit: Well, this caused a new problem to show up for me, wherein after opening several documents when I went to close the documents (by clicking the x in the upper right corner or using the 'exit word' menu selection) there would be difficulties with the normal.dotm template being read only and having to wade through a messy series of dialogs as Word tried hard to save the default template. So I undid the changes and went back to my older problem. So close.