Microsoft Word 2003 Locking Up

Question

When I double click on a .doc file in a folder, it will open Word 2003, but it will not open the file. Word is then locked up and can't be closed with Task Manager. How do I avoid this?

Excel works fine. I am running Word, Excel, and Outlook from the same CD. Outlook is used only for names and addresses for addressing envelopes or creating labels. I've tried all the options on this web site, which are for Microsoft Office 12, but none of them work. I've tried to find a setting that might affect Word or its documents, but I can't find anything. I'm running Windows 10, 64 bit.

Answer 1

Office 2003 including Word works fine on Windows XP. It is long, long out of support, so your best solution here is to upgrade to a modern Office package which work great inside Windows 10.

Also Office 365 comes in a 64-bit version (Office 2003 does not) which again matches well with Windows 10 64-bit.

If you need to run Office 2003 to do some conversions to a newer package, you can run it in a Virtual Machine. I am pretty sure Office 2003 will work in Windows 7

Answer 2

Word occasionally opens up a modal dialog box when it opens. It also sometimes does stuff with its template files.

Try opening the program via its start menu shortcut rather than via a file shortcut. That takes off the file parameter to the program call and might allow it to show its modal. If it doesn't, try right-clicking on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen and click on 'Cascade' to show any windows that might be off-screen.

If that doesn't work, it might be a problem with normal.dot, the template file. Go to C:\Users[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates and delete the file there called normal.dot. Next time you open word the program should recreate a default copy of the file and that tends to sort quite a number of problems.

Failing that, try an office repair. Go to Control Panel > Programs and Features. Find Microsoft Office 2003 in the list and click on the 'Change' button at the top. When it comes up, choose the 'Repair' option.