Please help, I can't open any files with Word anymore!

[morning]

Oh man! I am in the middle of two big essays. I do all my work on this computer.
I was messing around trying to figure out how to file share with my desktop pc. I turned on file vault. I don't really even know what it does. It said I needed to clear my trash because there was not enough memory to run file vault. I did that, then my Word won't open from the dock. So I turned off file vault. My Word keeps jamming. I can open a new document but I can't open anything in my files.

what have I done? what do I do now? should I reinstall it? should I uninstall it?
will any of my work be lost? I am guessing not because I can open the files with appleworks. geez this is pretty bad timing. Any ideas?? I suppose that everything from my trash is gone,gone,gone huh?
Is there any site where I can ask these sort of total newbie questions?

[Tommo]

You can try deleting the word.plist file in your home directory under /Library/preferences. I have found MS office applications can suffer from corrupt preferences files. Be aware that any menu customisation you might have done will be lost though.

[morning]

Originally Posted by Tommo

You can try deleting the word.plist file in your home directory under /Library/preferences. I have found MS office applications can suffer from corrupt preferences files. Be aware that any menu customisation you might have done will be lost though.

Tommo,
when i look in that file I see no word plist at all. but when i searched in the spotlight for microsoft word plist, there was listed a file called com.microsoft.Word.plist. and when I "get info" it lists the file as being in the folder under /Library/preferences.. any ideas on this one? of course I don't even know what a plist is. Anyway, I would like to try to trash it, especially if it is acting up like this.











'

[Tommo]

Sorry, I should have been more specific. That is the one you need to remove, just copy it out to the desktop rather than delete it. A plist file is the same as the old preferences files, it contains the settings for the application is corresponds to. In my experience MS Office apps particularly Word and Powerpoint can suffer with corrupted preferences files.

By removing the plist file from the preferences folder it forces Word to create a default one again which should be OK. Try moving it out to the desktop and launching Word.