Windows Explorer - run time error 5

[AngelaJ]

We have a user who cannot open Office documents from Windows Explorer. When she tries double-clicking she gets a MS Visual Basic error, "Run time error 5. Invalid procedure call or argument". She doesn't have VB installed on her PC. We've tried re-installing Office and that doesn't help. Any ideas?

Thanks! <img src=/S/headthrob.gif border=0 alt=headthrob width=15 height=15>

[carbonnb]

Is it one specific file? All Office documents? Specific application's documents?

Can you give a few more details please and thank you.

[AngelaJ]

It's happening for sure on Word files. We'll go check and see if Excel/other apps are doing it as well.

Angela

[carbonnb]

If it's just Word files, the first thing that comes to mind is an add-in or a template in the startup directory is causing the problem.

Does this error come up if you just open Word?

If it does, then you will need to take a step by step approach to fixing this

Start by moving any templates from Word's startup directory to a temporary holding spot

Restart Word.

If the error is still showing up, then you have a problem with normal.dot. Rename it to something like normal.old and restart Word.

Then try adding the templates back from the startup directory one by one and restart Word after moving each one back.

When you get the error coming back up, that will be the template that has a problem with the VBA code.

If there was no error with Normal.dot, just try moving the templates back one by one.

[Andrew Lockton]

Can the user open Word and then open the file by choosing File > Open? If this pathway exists then the problem is not the application but the file association's for the document type *.doc

If this is the case let us know as the remedy is relatively simple and has been covered in this forum in the past but will take some time to find.

[AngelaJ]

Thank you both for your help--it turns out there was a template in the Startup folder that was causing the trouble. She had a stamp.dot file in there and when it was deleted the problem magically went away! <img src=/S/cheers.gif border=0 alt=cheers width=30 height=16>