What happened to Word??

[catbert]

Okay, here's the strangest thing yet that WinMe has done to me . . .
I was on the web and wanted to save an article I was reading in text format. It wouldn't format nicely in Notepad (scrolled waaaaay off to the right), so I thought I'd save it in Word. Well, I went to open Word from my taskbar icon, but the icon wasn't there. So I went to my start menu . . . no Word icon there, either.

I did a search for msword . . . 0 files found.
Now I know that I had Word installed and running, just used it the other day, and have numerous Word documents saved, so I thought I'd open one of those and see if I could get a new doc to open.
Well, guess what? NO WORD!! "The application associated with this file cannot be found"

So what happened to Word? No, I did not uninstall it, accidentally or otherwise. And typically when I do uninstall an application, it always leaves a stray shortcut or two around. Word was completely, entirely, irrevocably gone!!!

How does this happen? I would ask, Why does this happen?, but I've stopped asking why Windows does anything . . .

Thanks in advance, hope somewhat can shed some light here!

[mikeL]

try a search for winword, see if that finds it.

[Reedimus]

can't help with word, but when you use notepad go to edit and select "word wrap" so your words don't scroll to the right.

[aym]

Go to Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs and double click MS Office, then reinstall MS Word.

[mike breck]

Go to Program Folders and see if the Office or Word folder is still present.

Run an updated Virus scan to be on the safe side.

[catbert]

Reedimus - thanks for the tip on Notepad, I'll try to remember it.

The rest of my Office files are intact, just no Word. I know that I can reinstall it, I just hoped that someone could explain how it could disappear without a trace!