MS Word

Installation, Repair, and Configuration

Installation should be a snap, whether you're installing Word on its own or as part of Office. You slide in the CD, make a few simple decisions, type in the product key, and let the installation roll. The first time you run one of the applications in Office XP (also known as Office 2002) or Office 2003, you have to activate Office. But after that, you're on your way.

This process gives you a default installation of Office. If you're installing Office from scratch, you get all the Office applications installed with the default configurations. If you're upgrading an existing version of Office, the installation removes any existing versions of the applications and picks up your existing configurations for the new versions of the applications.

But one size seldom fits all not comfortably, anyway. Word may bug you for the installation CD when you try to access particular features. You may want to run two or more different versions of Word on the same PC, rather than allowing the upgrade to remove your existing version. You may choose not to activate Word (or Office) immediately on your PC. You may find that Word runs wretchedly slowly or that you need to reinstall it. Whether you installed Word from scratch or upgraded it, you'll probably want to configure some of its basic options. This tutorial shows you how to deal with all these annoyances and plenty more.