Office Apps accessing the Internet

[Guest]

I have a Windows XPPro workstation with Symantec Norton Firewall 2003, &
Microsoft Office XPPro.

1) Why do the Office applications need to access the Internet when they are
started (excluding Outlook)?
2) How do I stop Microsoft Office XP Pro (Excel/Word) from accessing the
Internet at the application or O/S level, while not being inhibited from
using the products (I’ve tried to disallow Excel and Word from accessing the
Internet by blocking it with Norton Firewall, but it seems to cause problems
while opening those documents.)?

 

[Frank Kabel]

Hi
one reason for this (AFAIK): The Online help functionality