Dawn, So am I understanding this correctly: you have used the Office applications on this computer before, without issue, and recently it started asking you for a validation code each time you tried to launch one of the Office applications? Does it tell you that there are a limited number of uses of Office left before you must activate? One possibility is that it asked for validation all along, but whoever was using it wasn't' aware of it, so just cancelled it out, and now the number of un-validated uses has been exhausted so now it won't open. How long have you had the computer? Elise > It is only when I want to use Word or if I > receive a email for a PowerPoint slide show, excel. > it won't open. I just can't seem to use Word to write a document. =20 ************************************************************* You are receiving this mail because you subscribed to mso@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or MicrosoftOffice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To send mail to the group, simply address it to mso@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To Unsubscribe from this group, send an email to mso-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word "unsubscribe" (without the quotes) in the subject line. Or, visit the group's homepage and use the dropdown menu. This will also allow you to change your email settings to digest or vacation (no mail). //www.freelists.org/webpage/mso To be able to use the files section for sharing files with the group, send a request to mso-moderators@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and you will be sent an invitation with instructions. Once you are a member of the files group, you can go here to upload/download files: http://www.smartgroups.com/vault/msofiles *************************************************************