Tricky one (Office menus)

[TheOldhamWhisper]

Running Office 2000 on XP Pro machine, user reports that the menus are empty and the right click won't work. Clicking on the main menu item brings up the 'holder' so I suspect it might be a corrupt dll.

The problem is specific to Office (no other applications affected) and using 'sub-menus' obtained by keystrokes (eg Alt+V, T) temporarily seems to fix the problem.

As the machine was due for an office upgrade anyway, it seemed a good time to do it. I installed Office 2003 using the 'Complete' option and 'Remove all existing versions' - all to no avail.

I've done a few searches but have not covered all avenues yet - just wondered if anyone had encountered this before and knows where I should be concentrating my efforts to resolve it.

[GlosRFC]

Two things I'd consider - a rogue macro that is removing the menus when you start Office and a corrupt entry in the registry.

Solving the first is simple enough. If you're launching your Office applications from a shortcut icon on your desktop, check the properties to see if a macro is set to run (usually using the /m switch), e.g. "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\WINWORD.EXE" /mdodgymacro
If so, just remove the /mdodgymacro command.

However, as it seems to be affecting all of your Office apps, I'd go for the corrupt registry entry. Close all your Office applications then start Regedit and navigate to the
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\xx\Word\Data where xx represents a number, e.g. 9.0, 10.0, 11.0
Rename that entire key to something different, e.g. dataold, by right-clicking on it and chosing rename. Then close Regedit and start Word. It should rebuild the default menus for you.

[Win2Win]

Get Office 2008.....you can have weeks of fun trying to find everything :)