I am using Windows XP and Word 2000 stand alone. I find that when I want to change the font colour, clicking on the drop down arrow does nothing, ie no palette of colours appears and I cannot change the colour unless I drag a new link to this function from the Edit Toolbar page. So then when I do this it is okay but when I exit Word, the same thing happens next time - the palette is not available. I did try Detect and Repair from my disk but this did nothing to improve the problem.

I did try to install Service Pack 3 but it would not do this as the message said it had not found the expected version of Word 2000. It is a registered copy albeit through eBay.

"It is a registered copy albeit through eBay."
I'm wondering if the original holder is still the registered user for the software. That can be a problem as I found out myself after buying an artwork creation program for stained glass making on eBay. I don't know if there is anything you can do. I was stuck and unable to upgrade because of it.

I found this. I don't have the program installed to put the cure to the test. The instructions may be clearer for those who have.

That does work, and is how I discovered it could be overcome. However, as it says, it is only for the current session and reoccurs when next using Word. I suspect it would have been better to buy from a proper source and not eBay as I cannot upgrade either.

Perhaps it's time to give OpenOffice Three a try. Or perhaps it can be written as OpenOffice 'free' ..since it is

I used to have Wordperfect and was happy with this but the reason I changed to Word was that every document sent to me had to be converted to Word as it was so commonly used. This often led to quite a few cannot open messages. Would I encounter the same problem with OpenOffice?

I can't say for sure. Some finer points may need adjusting when a document created in MS Word is opened in OpenOffice (table layout for example) but anything with the .doc extension should open OK.