As an old silver-top heavily into word processing at home, all is well with my Windows 95 and Word 97 packages except that for some documents (produced on earlier software versions). Word can’t find either its Thesaurus file or its Dictionary file. It never seems to lose both at the same time. I fixed the Dictionary problem in each document individually by: Edit (Select all) Tools (Language) Mark selected text as English (UK) OK but I can’t discover any way to connect the errant Thesaurus.

There are two possible solutions. The most likely is that the Thesaurus file is corrupt or doesn’t actually exist in the first place. If this is the case you can install it by going to Start menu > Settings > Control Panel, and double click ‘Add/Remove’. In that window there should be a list of applications. Scroll down it until you find ‘Microsoft Office’ click it once (to select it) and click the ‘Add/Remove’ button. This will launch the Office Setup and give you the option to install extra components (ie. Thesaurus). Make sure that you have your original Word CD or Disks handy. The second, less likely, solution to your problem is that the Thesaurus in Word 97 is not backward compatible with documents made with an earlier version of Word. If this is the case then there is not much you can do about it other than trying to buy an older copy of Word.