I hope you can help with this problem with Microsoft Word 2000 and Windows 98. When closing any Word document (even a blank one) I get the following message: ‘The file Normal.dot already exists. Do you want to replace the existing file?’ I click ‘No’ and then get a Save As screen. It opens at the ‘Templates’ directory which contains two files: ‘~$normal.dot’ (indicates an open doc) and ‘normal.dot’ (indicates a word doc). Word wants to save the file as ‘normal.dot’. When I press ‘Save’ the following message appears ‘The file Normal.dot already exists. Do you want to replace the existing file?’. I answer ‘No’ and click on the close box. If I press ‘Yes’ I immediately get the message ‘This program has performed an illegal operation…’. After clicking ‘No’ and ‘Close’ I get a message: ‘Changes have been made that affect the global template Normal.dot. Do you want to save those changes?’ If I answer ‘Yes’, it will not let me proceed. When I answer ‘No’ I then get the message ‘This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. If the problem persists contact the program vendor. Details: Winword caused an invalid page fault in module at 0000:82blf99e’. When I press ‘Close’ the program closes ok. This problem was not present when I first installed Word. I cannot recall when it started. I cannot find any open document using the normal.dot template. Is it doing any harm to just close it in the way described? Thank you in anticipation.

The file ‘Normal.dot’ is the Word global template. In basic terms, this is the base document for all documents. When you create a new document in Word, the Normal.dot template is the blank document which you type your new document. Users can find the ‘Normal.dot’ template useful if, for example, you wish to have a letter head on every new document you create. You can edit the Normal.dot template and place the letter head in the template so that for each new document you create thereafter, the letter head will be already in place for you. Your question is a tricky one as a number of things could be causing the problem. Firstly, go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Find’ and search for the file ‘Normal.dot’ (without the quotes). Rename this file, for example, as ‘Normal2.dot’ and reopen Word. Word will automatically create a fresh copy of Normal.dot. However, be aware that if you have customised the Normal.dot template (eg. like the letterhead example I gave) then the custom formatting will be lost. This, however, can be retrieved from the old Normal.dot file which you renamed. If this does not solve your problem, your computer could be infected with a Word Macro virus, which is possible as the problem didn’t occur when you originally installed Word. Can you remember if this problem only occurred after opening a document maybe a friend sent you? I suggest that you download the latest virus definitions for your virus scanner and do a complete scan of your computer (scan all files, not just *.exe files). If you haven’t got a virus scanner, download InnoculateIT by Computer Associates. This can be downloaded from antivirus.cai.com and the program itself and all virus updates are free. Finally, remember that there is always the option to reinstall Word and see if that solves your problem. If you haven’t customised Word radically and wouldn’t mind reinstalling it then I would say try this. If you are still having problems after this, please contact me again and I will look into your problem some more.