Office programs disappeared

[Will]

I run XP Home on a year old Dell 4500. I have done
regular downloads of "critical updates" (last about 1 week
ago). Office programs with an icon in the quick start or
desktop start the program (Publisher, Word, etc) fine, but
those without such an icon are now invisible to Windows
Explorer or the popup Start menu.. What's happened? How
do I start an office program if I don't already have the
icon. I have recently installed Spysweeper and Norton AV
updates, nothing else.

 

[Guest]

All the executables for MS Office should be something like:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\MSACCESS.EXE
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\MSPUB.EXE
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\POWERPNT.EXE
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\MSWORD.EXE

You could probably recreate the links in the start menu by right clicking
the file and create shortcut. Move the shortcut files to
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office

You can use the same create shortcut method to make a shortcut on the
desktop. You can also drag the shortcut to the quick launch bar if you want
to put it there.
Hope this helps.

Joe