Hi Stefan,
My version of word is running as part of MS Office Pro 2007. It is very annoying that all other file types for MS and other applications work fine , it's only these two that have a problem. Word still works and I guess I will just have to live with the problem. I am sure that you are very busy with other things of greater importance.

I have been thinking further about this problem, I think this could be to do with "File Associations" and implies that I have a registry corruption. I wonder if it is worth running an "SFC / Scannow" to see if any of the basic windows files are corrupted. I am not sure what other problem that might cause however. Thanks again for your support , regards Tom