Unable to Open or Save files Office 2003 Basic Edition

Edward Williams 51 Reputation points
2022-04-23T09:54:18.71+00:00

After purchasing new computer, I loaded my old software Office 2003 basic edition onto Windows 11. It loaded fine, however, when trying to open or save a file in either Word or Excel the program stalls and the hour glass appears. I click within the Save or Open dialog box and receive a error that says Open(Not Responding) or Save(Not Responding).

I used this old software without issue in Windows 10, so not sure what is happening? I realize the software is quite dated, but I don't use it often enough to really justify upgrading and I like the software. I would like to continue to use if possible.

Hope someone can help me.

Office Management
Office Management
Office: A suite of Microsoft productivity software that supports common business tasks, including word processing, email, presentations, and data management and analysis.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
2,058 questions
Accepted answer
  1. Deloris Wing 140 Reputation points
    2023-02-15T15:10:10.6866667+00:00

    I tried several of the methods identified by others, but they did not work for me. I, too, had used Office 2003 satisfactorily on Windows 10 Home. I bought a new computer (a 17" HP with intel i5, 1 T SSD and 16 G of ram) running Windows 11 home. I found that Word and Excel both had problems with hanging on open and save as.

    I found a work around was to locate a saved file from previous work, copy the file and rename it, delete the contents, and load the new content for the file either by typing it in or copying it from a text editor. That way save would work as long as I didn't press save as. I resigned myself to doing that until I could find a solution.

    Shortly after that I noticed that OneDrive was set up to receive my files from <documents>. Then I discovered that all of my files were being pointed to the cloud in Windows 11. I went onto the internet to find out how to stop that - I am one of those people who does not want to put my stuff on the cloud. I found out how to do it and stopped OneDrive from being the repository then moved everything that was saved there off the OneDrive, back to the c: drive.

    I went back to work and lo and behold Word 2003 and Excel 2003 are now able to operate correctly in both open and save as. It appears that somehow, the presence of OneDrive was impeding these operations. And now they are working as expected and as they had on Windows 10 previously.

    I am sure that someone else can explain this and I for one am hard pressed to imagine that MS is unaware of it.

    11 people found this answer helpful.

12 additional answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Roger Nieh 0 Reputation points
    2023-10-27T03:01:30.5233333+00:00

    I found a solution friends!!!!!

    Actually someone else did: https://github.com/oneapi-src/oneTBB/issues/665

    In summary, change a registry entry and office 2003 will work like usual!

    *Note: Registry will reset on reboot, so I had to create a batch file that will run on startup that uses the reg.exe add instruction. Here's a sample of my batch script:

    REG ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\SyncRootManager\OneDrive!S-1-5-21-1574837284-834756-1293847123849-1001!Personal|28317461237482134\UserSyncRoots" /v "S-1-5-21-1574837284-834756-1293847123849" /t REG_SZ /d "C:\Users\MyName\OneDriveNotExisting" /f

    I hope that helps someone.

    BTW, here's the original solution posted by Sedeniono:

    After some more debugging, I can confirm that one ingredient of the crash is indeed the registry path I mentioned above. More precisely, one requirement for the crash to occur is that the SID-key ("S-1-5-21-...") under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\SyncRootManager\OneDrive!......!101\UserSyncRoots needs to contain a path that contains the Desktop. The path by default points to C:\Users\<User>\OneDrive, and the Desktop got moved by OneDrive to C:\Users\<User>\OneDrive\Desktop. If you modify the SID-key to e.g. C:\Users\<User>\OneDriveNotExisting, the crash no longer occurs. If you "Unlink this PC" in the OneDrive settings, the entire registry key gets deleted.

  2. Peter Smith 0 Reputation points
    2023-11-13T01:42:39.7266667+00:00

    I have two windows 11 computers with the same configuration, both with Office 2003 installed. One of them did not have one-drive managing files, and that one worked with Word's save-as command. The other one, which did have one-drive active, failed to save-as. Word crashed and had to be restarted. Deinstalling one-drive caused the failed one to work. Reinstalling one-drive caused it to fail again.

    Another thing I noticed is that with one-drive installed, the storage locatlion under Word Options pointed to a one-drive folder. Deinstalling one-drive made it point to a local folder automatically, but the one-drive files were not in that local folder.

    My next step is to figure out how to make all the one-drive files local and be able to switch back and forth without copying 1.5 GB of date back and forth. That must wait until some time in the future.

    0 comments
  3. BSS 10 Reputation points
    2024-01-28T10:29:03.85+00:00

    So thanks to Deloris Wing, the cause of problem has already been identified as ‘Documents being saved to OneDrive’ The fix is quite simple. You don’t have to Uninstall or Unlink OneDrive. In windows explorer, Right click OneDrive,  then select OneDrive (Cloud) and Settings. Under the Heading ‘Sync and Backup’, select ‘Manage Backup’ Slide ‘Documents’ toggle switch to ‘Off ‘ (left) and Hey Presto! The problem is fixed. Here, you can also switch off any other folders that you don’t want to save to OneDrive. Incidentally, I had come up with the same work around as mentioned by Deloris Wing.  

    0 comments
  4. James J 1 Reputation point
    2024-05-29T18:46:00.6+00:00

    One Answer - simple for some, difficult for others. I have done this on 2 machines.

    1. Back up all of your personal files however is best for you.
    2. Format your hard drive.
    3. Install Windows 10.
    4. Install MS Office 2003, update it and make sure it works.
    5. Upgrade to Windows 11. MS Office will no longer default to the same folder when you choose "Save As".
    6. Enjoy! ;)
    0 comments