Rafael continues his exploration of what I consider to be a very real and silly Word bug, this time providing instructions for how to fix the problem:
Due to the way Word was designed, there doesn’t appear to be an easy solution to preserve the use of the DDE command and keep window z-order intact (on our end). In Connect lingo, this would have probably been marked WILLNOTFIX. Thankfully, we can tweak the registry a bit to alter the open behavior, therefore making Paul Thurrott happy.
Here is some very important information I’m required to inform you about:
- Each document opened will now spawn a new winword.exe process.
- Changing behavior for other actions (e.g. print) is out of this guide’s scope
- Changing behavior for other applications (e.g. Powerpoint, Excel) is out of this guide’s scope.
- Backing up the registry, undoing the changes, or other otherwise covering your ass is out of this guide’s scope.
Okay, let’s dig in!
Instructions follow. And yes, this does make me happy. :) Thanks, Raf.