I have run into a very strange problem with Microsoft Word.

Here's the background. I am running Microsoft Office Professional (fully updated) on a machine with the Windows XP Home (fully updated) operating system. My wife has a folder on the desktop where she keeps her business correspondence. This folder has several hundred Word documents in it.

Recently when she attempts to edit a document and save it under a different name, Word 2003 hangs without displaying the "save as" dialogue box.

If I copy and paste the document file to the My Documents folder, then it can be edited and "save as" works provided the newly named document is saved to the My Documents folder. If I copy the document to any other folder attempting a "save as" causes Word to hang.

Any suggestions as to what is going on and how to fix the problem would be greatly appreciated.

might check the properties of the files.....see if read only.

I have discovered the cause of this problem. It was a conflict between a recent Microsoft security update, software for an HP 3970 scanner attached to this computer, and Word 2003.

The following actions solved the problem. First I removed the HP Software for the 3970 scanner. I then checked Word 2003 and found that no longer was hanging on the "save as" command. But that left me without a driver for the scanner, because there was no native XP driver available for it.

So, I then went to the HP website downloaded the latest version of the software for the scanner. I installed the software, then checked Word 2003 and found that "save as" was still working normally.

The key to the solution was a very obscure and cryptic posting on a Microsoft site.