No Help menu? No Doc. Info. Panel? Ack!

[Doc Sc00teR]

I'm having a problem with Office 2007 (I can duplicate it every time in Word
and PowerPoint). When I go to Prepare > Properties, I get a blank panel with
a simple message at the top: "The Document Information Panel was unable to
load."

When I click on the question mark "Help" icon at the upper right corner, no
Help menu loads. Nothing at all happens.

I purchased a second copy of Office 2007 for my wife's computer, and both of
these features work correctly. I have run the Microsoft Office Diagnostics
feature, and it says that everything is running fine.

Ack! What can I do? (Not being able to access the help menus in this new
version is a real problem, and I need to be able to assign document
properties to archives of Word docs.)

 

[Mary Sauer]

How to troubleshoot problems that occur when you start or use Word 2007, Word
2003, or Word 2002
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921541/en-us
Help content may not appear as expected in 2007 Office programs
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926426/en-us

 

[Doc Sc00teR]

Thanks. I tried all of the suggested solutions mentioned in those links, but
none of them corrected the problem. I still cannot access the Document
Information Panel at Prepare > Properties, nor can I load the Help menu once
I've tried to access doc properties (though, oddly, if I start a new document
and immediately click on the question mark button before doing anything else,
the help menu comes up; once I start work, the help menu no longer functions).

Any other suggestions?