Insert symbol no longer works in Word

Claire Cox wrote:

Hello fellow Sunday workers!

I'm using Word 2003 and for some unknown reason, Insert symbol has suddenly stopped working. The command is still there under Insert, though it hasn't got a picture next to it and nothing happens when I click on it. This has happened once before and my teenage son managed to fix it by doing something with the registries. Unfortunately, he's not around today and I really don't know what to do. Can anyone give me an idiot-proof guide as to how to sort this out?

One solution I found on-line suggested typing winword.exe /a in Run. Whilst this works on the new Word file which then opens, any other word files I open still have the same problem. I've also tried deleting the user data file under Hkey_current_user, but to no avail. Sigh.

This is driving me mad - it's probably some silly update that has changed all my settings yet again - I do wish they wouldn't meddle with things! I've had problems with the default e-mail programme from Word switching to Outlook rather than Outlook Express recently and it transpired that that was to do with an update for Outlook which I didn't want or need. Aaaargh!

Many thanks for any suggestions.

Jerzy Czopik wrote:

If this helps, you have had a damaged Normal.dot.
You may then want to copy the settings from your old Normal.dot (now called xNormal.dot) to the new one created by Word. Use the function "Organise" for this.

Jerzy