Thumbnails of Office 2003 documents do not appear in Windows 2000 Explorer

When you view a Microsoft Office 2003 document as a thumbnail in Microsoft Windows 2000 Explorer, a blank square with the Office 2003 program icon appears instead of the thumbnail of the Office 2003 document.

This problem may occur if the Office 2003 Setup program removes the subkeys under the Shell Extension (ShellEx) key from the registry.

To work around this problem, add the appropriate subkeys to the Shell Extension (ShellEx) key back to the registry. To do this, follow these steps.

Warning If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

1. Quit all Office 2003 programs.
2. Click Start, and then click Run.
3. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
4. Expand the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT subtree.
5. Locate and then expand the Office 2003 extension, such as .ppt.
6. Click ShellEx.
7. With ShellEx selected, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click Key.
8. Type {BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}, and then press ENTER.
9. With the {BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1} subkey selected, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click String Value.
10. Type (Default), and then press ENTER.
11. With (Default) selected, click Modify on the Edit menu.
12. Type {9DBD2C50-62AD-11d0-B806-00C04FD706EC} in the Value data box, and then click OK.
13. Repeat steps 4 through 12 for each of the Office 2003 extensions (such as .doc or .xls) that are affected by the problem that is described in the "Symptoms" section.
14. Click Exit on the Registry menu to quit Registry Editor.