What's up, DOC?

This will restore the correct Registry entries. You’ll get a message that Word or Office is being configured and eventually Word will start. Close Word and .doc files should load normally in Explorer.

Finally, go back and reinstate the Startup items, add-ins and macros one by one to pinpoint the source of the problem.

Yet more bookmarks
Over the past two months we’ve looked at bookmarks and what you can do with them. Here’s another simple automation trick that combines bookmarks and fields to prompt for text that you want to appear several times in the same document.

First, insert an Ask field; in Word 2003 and earlier Insert, Field, Ask, and in Word 2007 Insert, Quick Parts, Field, Ask. This will give you the Ask field dialogue.

You need to supply a bookmark name, some prompt text and, optionally, a default response. If the last is more than one word it needs to be in double-quotes. OK out. The field will spring into action for a practice run.

Now you need to create more fields in which the text entered in response to the Ask field will appear. Each of these needs to be a Ref field pointing to the bookmark created by the Ask field. It helps with updating if the Ask field is placed before all the Ref fields.

With all the fields in place, make sure you’re in results view (ie seeing what would be printed) rather than field codes view – ­ you can toggle between the two with Alt & F9. Press Control & A to select the whole document, then F9 to update the fields.

The Ask box will appear, with the default response (if it exists) in place. Type in the new text, then click OK. You’ll see the text you just typed appear at the location of all the Ref fields.

It’s useful to be able to see field codes and their results at the same time. You can do this with the Window, Split command (on the menus in Word 2003 and earlier, and on the View ribbon in 2007). You can then set codes or results independently in each pane as well as showing/hiding formatting marks and bookmarks.

Wordpad revisited
Wordpad made its debut in Windows 95. In the ensuing 13 years its feature list and interface has stayed perfectly preserved. It has, however, kept pace with changes in the .doc (but not .docx) file format.