Word 2003

[B Green]

I'm offically going bonkers now.

This morning shortly after arriving at work, I ran Windows Update and picked
up all high-priority updates.

After that update finished, I opened Word 2003 (SP2), and many of the menu
items were suddenly not available - permanently grayed out ("Save," "Save
As," "Options," "Protect Document," "Macros," etc.). (NOTE: I do not know
for a fact that this morning's Windows updates caused this problem. But I
did not have this problem yesterday, and Windows Update is the only
significant thing that has happened to my system since yesterday. So I would
not be surprised if the one was connected to the other.)

I ran "Detect and Repair." No change.

I inserted the Office installation disc and ran the repair from there. No
change.

I ran Reinstall from the installation disc. No change.

I uninstalled Office entirely, rebooted and reinstalled Office and installed
all updates (including SP2). No change.

So I figured it was probably a registry issue - a corrupt key probably did
not get deleted during the uninstall.

I ran "Detect and Repair" again, making sure to tell it to reset my
personalized settings. No change.

After digging around on this board, I found and tried the "/a" trick.
Success! I had back all my menu items.

Then I closed Word and opened it from the Start Menu. All the options were
again grayed out.

Going back to this board, I went into the registry editor and deleted the
keys in \\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11\Word\Data. No
change.

So I ran "winword.exe /a" again. Menu items return.

So I closed Word and opened it from the Start Menu. Menu items are grayed
out again.

So now after four hours of trying everything I can think of, I can only
activate all menu items if I open Word by using "winword.exe /a". If I open
Word any other way, the problem comes right back again.

Is there any way to fix this permanently? Other registry keys that affect
this? A Regclean that I can run after uninstalling Office and before
reinstalling? Anything?

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

The only solution I don't see mentioned is to rename or delete normal.dot.
Suppressing normal.dot is one of the primary effects of using the /a switch,
and I'm betting that zapping normal.dot is the solution.

 

[B Green]

The only solution I don't see mentioned is to rename or delete normal.dot.
Suppressing normal.dot is one of the primary effects of using the /a switch,
and I'm betting that zapping normal.dot is the solution.

I could kick myself for not thinking of that.

However, it does not solve the problem completely.

When I deleted "normal.dot" and opened Word from the Start Menu, it worked.
But when I opened a Word document from within my paperless audit program (Pfx
Engagement), the same items are once again grayed out.

So now I'm thinking that perhaps there might be a problem with one of the
Engagement add-ins. I'll call their support and see if they've got any ideas.

Thanks much.

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Might be. It might also be -- if the document you opened is based on
Normal.dot -- that the corruption was "inherited" by the corrupted
Normal.dot. I'm not familiar with Pfx Engagement, so I don't know its
relationship with Word.


--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com