MS Word in Offfice 2003 is driving me crazy

[tomcat619]

Yesterday for no apparent reason Word and Outlook started prompting for a macro templet. The popup says "the file Normal already exists. do you want to replace the existing file". This is like the old w97m.melissa virus of the 90's. I ran three different antivirus programs and a trojan cleaner with no solution. I know macros are tricky but there has to be a way to kill this thing. It all started when I was cleaning out some unwanted programs, defraging, and running disk check. I even tried to repair and reinstall office to no avail. It saved all the settings. Can I remove office and clean up the registry keys? I read somewhere in another forum to just format the drive and start over. That seams a little extreme to me and about 7 hrs work.

I'm open to suggestions

Thanks Tom

[tomcat619]

One thing I forgot to mention is yesterday I also downloaded service pack 3 for XP. Strangely enough today I got another Windows update and the problem went away.

NEVER MIND

[DigeratiPrime]

Glad the problem went away and thank you for letting us know that. In the future I'd recommend you include more information up front, like what version of office you were using, if you installed any software the time the problem appeared, and the name of the updates you apply.

BTW Welcome to MSFN