Word Viewer Always Starts as New Instance of Program

When you start Microsoft Word Viewer 97-2000, it always creates another instance of Word Viewer, even if Word Viewer is already running.

For example, any one of the following actions creates another instance of Word Viewer:

• Double-clicking a document.
• Right-clicking a document, and then clicking WordView on the shortcut menu.
• Starting Word Viewer from the Windows Start menu.
• Double-clicking Wordview.exe.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section of this article.

You can use the Microsoft Word 97-2000 Viewer to view documents that were created in Microsoft Word 97, in Microsoft Word 2000, in Microsoft Word 2002, and in Microsoft Office Word 2003.

For additional information about Word Viewer 97-2000, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: