Yes yes it's horribly outdated but it's what I'm stuck with using to write my assessments and have had no problems with it the whole of this year and the last. Now when I double click on a word to highlight it and then click the backspace button it fails to remove the word. I tried overwriting the highlights word with another letter but nothing happens and the only way to remove the word is to press delete or go to the end and hold backspace. It used to allow me to highlight words and use backspace/another letter to remove the word but somethings happened and changed this.

Does anyone know how to get this normal setting back - I have no idea what I changed or even when I did it.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/901124

I still use Word 2000. No need to upgrade an Office Suite regularly.

I would vote for "Typing Replaces Selection" as the culprit. There is, or was, a way to change this on the main window by clicking on a button. It used to be down at the bottom near the Overstrike vs Insert indicators.

Same, at least until my old computer crapped out. Unless you REALLY need those minor extra features, there's really no reason to spend that much every time someone at Microsoft comes up with a new layout in their spare time.

And if that doesn't work, you could try http://www.libreoffice.org/ instead of MS Word.

For you that may be acceptable given your knowledge, but MS office malware is prevalent and all versions earlier than MS Office 2003 have EoL'd and have http://secunia.com/advisories/product/24/?task=advisories.

It's fine so long as you don't open randomofficedocument off the web, but then again, most people do. No way could I recommend not upgrading Office regularly for most people (regularly being defined as staying in supported Office versions)

Of course I just use LibreOffice except when I am forced to use Access

This worked a treat, all I needed was option 3 - Thank you

but the email said that I'd die if I didn't disable my virus protection, open the file and then send it to all my friends

A quick google search tells me that the correct course of action in this situation is to delete system32

I didn't even know they made Microsoft office in 2003

I use Open Office. I got sick of MS Word having a mind of its own.

I don't really mind as long as I can happily write my projects and get images/graphs etc onto them I don't mind what version I use
Admittedly though, I'd rather have a new version of this since it's UI is a lot better and I can make tables/flow charts etc a hell of a lot easier. I resort to using Paint when doing them for 2003.

What did you use in school bro?

We had Office 95, 97, 2000 and then finally during my senior year they upgraded to 2003.