2 clicks won't open Word 2007

[ryguy7272]

I installed Office 2007 recently and am starting to get used to it.
Sometimes, and this has been occurring more and more recently, I double-click
a word document, and word starts to open, but the file doesn't fully open; I
see some sort of word-canvas but can't type on it. If I then click on the
file and drag it onto the canvas that seemed to open before, I see a small
plus, release the mouse button, and the file opens.

Has anyone experienced this problem before? This is NOT normal behavior.
What do I have to do to fix this?

Thanks!
Ryan--