I had the same problem and resolved by doing a re-install of Office 2000
from a different admin account.

wrote in message
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I have XP Pro and Office 2002 SP2. Whenever I try to
launch a file by clicking on it, either from File Manager
or from Outlook, the following happens, the correct
applicatoin is launched, but the file is not loaded. I
must then go into the application and find the file and
launch it from within the application.