What does "re-registering" Word actually do?

R

Rob Newson

In searching through the reams of FAQ's etc. I keep seeing
references to re-registering Word.
I know how to do it, but am wondering what exactly does it
do?
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

It resets Word's file associations in the Windows Registry. That is, it
reasserts Word's "ownership" of the .doc and .dot file types so that Windows
knows that Word is the application to be used to open files of these types
(or actually, in the case of the .dot file type, to create a new document
based on the template).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
J

Jay Freedman

Hi, Rob,

Like most large Windows programs, Word uses a ton (that's a scientific term
<g>) of entries in the Windows registry. Some of them are fairly easy to
understand -- some store options that you set in the program, or tell
Windows that Word is the standard program for opening certain kinds of
files. Others are intelligible only to programmers, such as the class
entries that control access to COM interfaces in the common Office DLLs.

When you re-register Word, you tell it to repeat the process (originally
done during installation) of writing the standard values of those entries.
By design, this doesn't change the options settings, but it does rewrite
everything else.
 
Top