Two minor problems with Word 97

Avoriaz

I’ve recently replaced the disk on my laptop and therefore installed XP and all my software including Word 97 from scratch. I’ve never bothered upgrading to a later version of Word as it does all I need. It is from a legitimate and paid for version of MS Office that I bought ages ago. This same version of Word has been working fine for me on various laptops for about ten years. It has worked fine on my current laptop for four years. All I have changed is the hard disk.

I now have two minor problems with the new install.

If Word is not already open and I double click on a word document in file manager it opens Word ok, opens the document ok but also displays a dialogue box….

C:xxxxx (file path) document.doc is being used by (my user name). Do you want to make a copy?

I have to click on cancel to make this box go away. I can then carry on as normal.

If Word is already open it doesn’t show this dialogue box. It opens the document in Word just as I would expect.

Why does it think I already have the document open? I seem to recall having the same problem last time I reinstalled Word 97 four years ago but I can’t remember how I fixed it.

My second problem is that I have set up normal.dot to use Arial in font size 14 but it keeps reverting to font size 10 which is too small for me.

How do I sort this? I’ve looked at all the “Options” but I can’t see what I am doing wrong.

Thanks

espresso

I believe that your first problem is something to do with file associations. See similar problem and fix for Excel here.

The second problem regarding your template. Surely you should have saved your preferences to Normal.dot

evilgoose

try this:-

type the following in the run box

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\WINWORD.EXE" /unregserver

Then type

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\WINWORD.EXE" /regserver


I cant honestly remember if its a feature in Word 97, but if you goto the FORMAT menu then FONT set your font settings as you want them then in the bottom left there is a DEFAULT button, click that and it should change your normal.dot settings.

If it doesnt - close word, do a search for normal.dot and check if its set to read only, if it is uncheck the box and then try the above. once done close word again and reset the file back to read only.

Avoriaz

Thanks for the suggestions. I will try those later.

I did mean to write Normal.dot and not Normal.doc.

Normal.dot is in the Templates folder where I would expect to find it and it is NOT set to read only

Avoriaz

Thank you both for your suggestions.

The "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\WINWORD.EXE" /unregserver that you both suggested has solved one problem. Clicking on a document in file manager now works normally.

Evilgoose, I’ve also tried your suggestion about the fonts and that also appears to work so far.

Thanks again. Your assistance is much appreciated.

superscaper

97 is getting quite long in the tooth. Why not give Open Office a try? It's free, modern, Microsoft compatible and if you don't like it just uninstall it. (You can have it alongside existing office applications). My personal opinion is that it's at least as good as Office 2003 (but not as good as 2007) so you may as well use it instead of older MS Office apps.

Avoriaz

superscaper wrote: »

97 is getting quite long in the tooth. .

So am I.:o I need a radical overhaul too.

Seriously, Word 97 has everything I need and probably a lot more. I do no more than write very simple letters and documents.

If I ever need a more sophisticated word processor I will look at Open Office etc but at the moment it really isn’t worth my while.

Thank for the suggestion anyway.