Problem with Help menus

[Jim]

Hi everyone, and sure hope someone can help me. You guys are always great at
coming up with solutions when I have a problem.

I am running XP Pro, SP2, with Office Pro 2003. I have been running this
combination with no problems for a little over a year.

Today, all of a sudden I have a problem.

In all my Office programs, when I ask it to open the Help menu it responds
normally and I am offered a box to enter my search data on Microsoft Office
Online. I then get the column of search results as I would expect. When I
select a topic, the Microsoft Office Word Help box is slow to open, and once
it does, but before it fills with data, I receive a separate Error box.

The Error box has a large red circle with an "X" and says:
A Runtime Error has occirred.
Do you wish to Debug?

Line: 2715
Error: Unterminated String constant

I can select Yes or No.

If I select No, the Microsoft Office Word Help box will fill with data and
topics. However, if I attempt to click on any of the topics I receive the
same Error box again, except the wording in the box this time is:

A Runtime Error has occirred.
Do you wish to Debug?

Line: 0
Error: Object expected

If I select NO I am stuck. Even though the Microsoft Office Word Help box is
still present, I keep receiving the Error warning when I try to select an
option.

In all cases, if I select Yes at the Error box (i.e. I want to debug) I am
then presented with a box called Just-In-Time Debugging and I am to select
one of two possible Debuggers (New Instance of Microsoft Script Editor, or
New Instance of Microsoft Script Editor 6.0).

If I tell it I want to debug using one of these debuggers a new window opens
and I'm now getting into stuff that I know nothing about.

If I tell the help menu to search for help offline, everything is fine. I
can access the Help items stored on my hard drive with no problem.

Since the error seems to be related to online help rather than offline, is
the problem on my computer? What is the problem and how do I fix it, or
should I even worry about it?

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

p.s. I have tried rebooting to see of that would clear the issue but nothing
changes.

Thanks

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Jim,

Try using Help > Detect and Repair. (It doesn't matter which Office
program you do this in, since they all invoke the Office installer.)

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[Jim]

Hi Jay:

Thanks for the advice.

I ran the Detect and Repair as you suggested, but unfortunately I still have
the same problem. I'm really at a loss what to do.

I suppose I could try reinstalling Office, but I sure hate to lose all my
settings and preferences and have to start over.

Thanks again, and if you have any other ideas please let me know.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Nothing specific, but try the steps in section 4 of
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProbsOpeningWord.htm.

 

[Guest]

Also in case this helps (I'm a newbie). Unless you made a typo in your
email, there is a clue here in that in the error message 'occurred' is not
spelt properly. This suggests a virus, because my experience with M$ is they
do not make errors like this...