When hovering the mouse over Word document (.DOC) files in Windows Explorer, the tool-tip which gives additional information (e.g. Title, Author, etc.) no longer appears. However, the tool-tips for other files types (such as Winzip archives) still appear. I have confirmed the ‘Show popup description for folder items and icons’ option is still enabled in the Folder Options. Having tried various fixes, I discovered that all the default Word macros (i.e. those included by default with Word) have disappeared from the NORMAL.DOT template. Do any of these macros drive the .DOC tool-tips? I copied the NORMAL.DOT file from another computer, but this did not fix the problem. As a final resort, I uninstalled and re-installed Office 2000. However, the problem remains. Another problem is with one of the Office programs which keeps associating itself with JPEG files. I always open JPEG files in a different program, but the Office application keeps changing the JPEG association to open that file type itself. The computer is running Windows 98 SE with Microsoft Office 2000 SR-1.

The document summary information (metadata) which appears when hovering over a Word document can be accessed and modified, through the document properties. You should be able to access this information by right-clicking on a document, then selecting ‘Properties’ from the menu that appears. In the Properties window that appears, click the ‘Summary’ tab. Here you can modify the information which appears in the popup description for the document. An alternative way to access the same information is to open the document in Microsoft Word, and then go to the ‘File’ menu > ‘Properties’. The most likely cause of the problem is Word has been configured not to save any summary information about documents. Because no summary information is being saved, there is no information to display when hovering over documents. We need to check that Word is configured to save summary information with the documents. In Word, go to the ‘Tools’ menu > ‘Options’. In the window that appears, click the ‘Security’ tab. Make sure the option ‘Remove personal information from file properties on save’ is not enabled. Then, click the ‘User Information’ tab and make sure your name and initials are complete. If you like on the ‘Save’ tab, you can enable the option ‘Prompt for document properties’. This will automatically open the document summary information window when you first save a document, allowing you to manually enter information about that document. Once you have finished changing the settings, click OK. You should now have (at least some) summary information stored with each document. Now check by going to the ‘File’ menu > ‘Properties’ > ‘Summary’. Close Word and check if you can view the popup descriptions for Word documents. You can find additional information on enabling/disabling summary information (metadata) in Word 2000 documents at support.microsoft.com/kb/237361. Should the problem continue even though there is information in the document summary, please contact me again.

Regarding the second problem of the Office program associating itself with JPEG files, there is likely to be a setting in the program to specify which file types the program should associate. For such settings, there is often the option that each time the program is opened it should automatically check to ensure it is still associated with those file types. This is likely to be the problem in your situation: the program is configured to associate with JPEG files, and set to check the association each time the program is opened. Go into the program options/settings to disable this feature, or configure the program not to associate with JPEG files. After you have made the configuration change in the program, reassociate the JPEG files with your preferred image viewing program and the association should be retained.