Greetings -

A customer of mine recently noticed that his installation of MS Word 2003 Professional (Windows XP, SP2) would not display any results for his thesaurus. Until recently, he had not tried to use the Thesaurus, so it is not known if it worked before. Upon further inspection, I found that the context menu (right-click menu) would display the first layer of thesaurus results for a selected word, however clicking on the "Thesaurus" option in the context menu (which brings up the research task pane) would prompt Word to install an additional component. The installation box would come up for a moment, a progress bar would indicate that it was installing, and then would finish and dissapear. The research pane, however, would not display any results, no matter what word was used. Any of the other research options selected (by using the drop down on the research pane, underneath the word being searched) would result in the same process, along with the same failure. I have included three screenshots appended to one another in the following link. Another computer using the same version of Office 2003 professional (installed in the same exact manner, also Win XP SP2) on the customer's home network works just fine. Multiple reinstallations, and deletion of files (namely, %system root%\docume~1\%current user%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\%various folders and subfolders associated with office%) have proven unsuccessful, and fruitless at best. Additionally, the Office 2003 Professional has also been fully updated.

Here's the link to the screenshots: http://www.robshelpdesk.info/helpdesk/MSWo...urusProblem.bmp

Any help in this matter would truly be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,



Robert
Owner - Rob's Help Desk

Hi Robert.
Does the spell checker work or is it gone too?
By default, Office will install the "Research" add-on in IE. If nothing else, it should find on-line results, provided the add-on is installed and enabled in IE (Tools>Manage Add-Ons) and a site is selected via the "research options" selection in the lower right corner under the Research pane in Word. There is also the local source options there as well. Take a look.
If worse comes to worse, remove and re-install the office proofing tools.
To do so, select Office in Add\remove. Click the "Change" button.
Select "Add or Remove Features" and click the "Next" button.
Place a check in the "Choose Advanced Customization of Applications" option and click the "Next" button.
Navigate to: Office Shared Features>Proofing Tools>English.
Left click each sub option and choose "Not Available". Click the "Update" button and follow the prompts.
To re-install, go back to the same spot and choose "Run from My Computer" on each of the options.
Insert the cd if prompted.

Thanks for the prompt reply! :-)

The spell checker is functioning properly at this time. Unfortunately, I did not check it before the attempted fix.

I did not see an applicable add-on was installed in IE. Currently, the customer is using IE7... Does this make a difference?

At this point, I tried the Add/Remove Features for M$ Office 2003 Pro fix; my attempt appears to have been in vain. I left the Add/Remove Programs window open, and tried the Thesaurus. It may be worth mentioning that I chose to keep the installation MSOCache files on the HD, to avoid the future need for the disk; the installer setup did not ask for one. Additionally, I did originally choose to install everything Office had to offer as "Install all from My Computer"; yet again, this was to avoid future need for a disk.

When using the Thesaurus in Word again (which had been closed until now), I received an additional error message, telling me that the installer was busy.... Closing the Add/Remove Window appeared to remedy *that* error message, however the problem still persisted as described above --- No results could be found using several easy words (Big, Large, True, Tough).

There were several sites selected in the "Research Options" menu from the Research Pane in word:
Reference Books
* Thesaurus: English (U.S.)
* Thesaurus: French (France)
* Thesaurus: Spanish (Spain-Modern Sort)
* Translation
Other Services
* Can't find it?
This option, I may have selected during previous troubleshooting steps, but I'm not sure.

Is there perhaps some registry entries that need to be modified/added/removed? I'm still unsure where to go from here.

One thing I forgot to mention previously is that the customer had a trial version of the Office 2007 (Beta 2, I believe) that had expired. I uninstalled the program using the add/remove in Windows, and had a heck of a time getting his Outlook.pst file back in shape. Finally, I was able to get that working, and then reverted him back to Office 2003. This Office 2007 problem also happened on the other computer (also WinXP), the revert to Office 2003 worked as well, and there has not been any issue with the Thesaurus or Spell Checker features. I don't think that it is related, but I figured you might want to know.

Thanks again; I look forward to your response.

Hey there,
Im having the same problem exactly at the moment :-s if you find a solution could you please email it to me (g.something@gmail.com) its driving me crazy

As of yet, I still have no solution to this problem. I will gladly share it with everyone when I acquire one.