Problem with Word paper size/Custom size

[zbnet]

A friend has contacted me with a problem that has me stumped. I'm hoping the collective wisdom here can help.

He recently bought a new Dell PC (XP Home), and has been busy transferring his files and applications over from his old PC. Although the new PC came with the latest version of MS Works reinstalled, he has always used Office 97 (and Publisher 98), and so he loaded his old Office 97 suite on.

His problems are that in Word, whenever he goes into the Page Setup of a document, the paper size is always set as Custom size, with a width and height of 2 (presumably cm). This is clearly not right! When OK is clicked, Word stops these settings being used - cancel is the only way to get out of the dialogue box.

If he loads an existing document, he can print it okay, but not change any of the Page Setup settings (like margins). It is impossible to alter the page size to a standard (like A4) and get Page Setup to update the width and height values.

I immediately suspected the normal.dot, so removed this from the system and had Word generate a new one. No joy. I then brought a known good normal.dot from another system, and replaced it - still no joy. So I resolved to reload Office 97 - took it off first, then totally reinstalled it all. The problem with Word remained.

I wondered if one of the other custom word templates he had brought from his old machine was causing the problem. I removed all those, in fact I deinstalled Office 97, deleted the Office directory and all the subdirectories under it (which are left after a deinstall), and then reinstalled Office 97 fresh without replacing the custom templates. I deleted his printer, and downloaded the latest official XP drivers from the Canon site, and totally reinstalled the printer. Still no joy.

Getting desperate, we decided the only solution was the ditch Office 97 and replace it with a spare copy of Office 2000 I have. So I fetched the CD, removed Office 97 completely, removed Works (just in case), and installed Office 2000.

Guess what? The problem with Word is still there!! Even on a brand new install of Office 2000 - exactly the same symptoms. Because Office 2000 didn't solve the problem, we deinstalled that and put Office 97 back (complete with the problem).

I figure there must be some sort of registry error that isn't being picked up when we deinstall either Office version, but it affecting both. But I've reached the end of my knowledge with Office. Can anyone possibly help us out???

 

[fumei]

It is either one of two things. It could have been a third - a printer driver issue - but because there are actual effects to the interface (things unbale to change, or greyed out), I usspect not.

1. it is either some COM Addin, or a global template that is being used. Look in the Program Files\ Microsoft Office\Office#\ Startup. You can check the Documents and Setting\username\Application blah blah\Startup for anything as well. But more importantly,check the Program Files.....\Startup. If there is anything there, copy and remove. In Word, make SURE there is nothing loaded globally. Check for COM Addins, or Template Addins. If any are there, copy and remove them.

2. you are correct. There is a Registry item somewhere that need to be dumped. I have a vague memory of where that may be, but can not think of it right now. Have you tried running winword.exe with the \r switch to re-register Word?

Gerry

 

[zbnet]

Can't find anything else that appears to be being loaded by Word.

Hadn't tried reregistering Word, but that doesn't improve matters - in fact, it's made it worse! Now the font selection is all screwed up in Word, it doesn't change fonts when a different font is selected, and Word seems to randomly GPF - especially when told to print.