My Microsoft Word 2007 SP3 installation has started to act very strange. When I open Word and select "Open", "Save" and "Save As" from the menu options the machine gives the sound of an error but does not display any text and the "Open", "Save" and "Save As" dialog box will not come up so I can select a file to open or save or save an existing file. If double click an existing word document from "My Documents" the document will open but still the same three dialog boxes, "Open", "Save" and "Save As" not open. Excel and PowerPoint and Access work with a problem just Word. I tried to repair installation but no joy.There are no errors in the error logs when I attempt this.



I really do not want to re-install Office 2007 on the machine if I do not need to to. Any ideas?

Microsoft Office 2007

Windows XP SP3

Dell Latitude E5420

Do you have any addins installed? Have you tried running Word in it's safe mode?

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

I do not have any add-ins. to be double sure I followed the instructions from the link below and deleted the entries from the registry, and also followed all the troubleshooting steps. Even ran the Fix For me route.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/6o9e5jy

I have tried almost everything I can think of.

Thanks Though.
-JG

OK, but: Have you tried running Word in it's safe mode?

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

Ran Word in Safe Mode. Same problem.

It's surprising that even resetting Word's registry keys wouldn't fix the problem. Did you install any new software immediately before the problem mainifested?

You might also try creating a new user account and seeing if Word runs correctly there.

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

No software installed within a 2 or 3 months of the problem occurring. I did delete the user account of the person using the box and created a new user account. We run Active Directory so I have plenty of user accounts to try. I logged in as admin as well.

When I tried to completely uninstall Office it kept some files and all of the registry keys. I guess I will need to try uninstalling Office, delete all the files, backup the registry and delete all the registry entries for Office.

Thanks
-JG

Hi JG,

Uninstalling Office does indeed leave behind numerous registry entries, all user files and various other files such as templates. In that regard, see: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928218/ for info on how to delete the registry entries & templates.

Before doing that, though, try the approach here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822005

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

Thanks for the links. I know where the problem is now, but I have no idea how to fix it. In the registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0 and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0 There is a folder/name-space called "Word" with 4 sub-folders. If I delete the 'Word' registry entries in one or both places the problem disappears the first time through but once I close Word and open up it again the problem is back. I am now focusing on a binary value in WORD>OPTIONS>Firstrun.

I appreciate you taking the time to help me out and giving me new troubleshooting starting points.

Thank
-JG