Excel and Word Freezing

[MikeW]

I have frequently experienced Excel freezing when clicking
on one any of several spots in the formatting toolbar,
especially font, font size, or font color. I have seen
this with Office 97 on my Win98 or Win2000 systems, or
with Office XP SB on my Sony Win2000 laptop system. In
the latter case it now freezes Word or Excel every time
before entering any data in the spreadsheet.

What should I do to solve this?

 

[MikeW]

-----Original Message-----
I have frequently experienced Excel freezing when clicking
on one any of several spots in the formatting toolbar,
especially font, font size, or font color. I have seen
this with Office 97 on my Win98 or Win2000 systems, or
with Office XP SB on my Sony Win2000 laptop system. In
the latter case it now freezes Word or Excel every time
before entering any data in the spreadsheet.

What should I do to solve this?

.

Cases:
A - Office 97 on Win98 System
Freezing occurs occasionally on large (5MB)files only when
pressing keys on format toolbar.
Error message: Norton Utilities 2000 tells me it has
frozen.
I have tried re-installing Office in many ways.

B - Office 97 on Win2000 System
Freezing occurs whether files are open or not, when
pressing keys on format toolbar.
Error message: "Excel has ... experienced a fault and must
shut down".
I have tried re-installing Office many times.

C - Office XP SB (OEM s/w) on Win2000 System
Freezing occurs with Excel or Word, sometimes within
seconds of opening the Application, before taking any
action.
Error message: same as Case B.
I have only installed once. I purchased the newer Office
version in hopes the problem would be solved.

Suggestions on what to do would be greatly appreciated.

Mike