A box appears whenever I try to enter text in Word 2002

I probably have some setting checked, but don't know which one it is. Whenever I try to enter text in my document, using Word 2002, a large "box" appears, as though it is expecting me to insert something like a picture or whatever. If I create a new document, everything works fine, so that's why I'm sure that I've simply enabled some setting that needs to be unchecked.

And while I'm at it, I have yet another question: Can anyone recommend the best tutorial for learning Word 2002? I have Visually Word 2002, which is a nice book; however, it isn't as detailed as I hoped it would be. Being unable to find the answer to this present problem is a good example of it lack of detail.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Just a thought, open word and let it do the thing you describe. Then open your new document which does not do that. Enter text into your new document and save it. Now enter text into the box in the first document and save it with a different name and close it. Go to the folder where you saved that to and delete the one with the box. Now close the one without a box and if prompted do you want to save changes click yes. Close word and reopen. See what happens now.

Hi Cyclops.

Thanks for your time and trouble with that idea; however, I tried it and got the same "box" as before. After reading your idea, I thought, "Yeah, that should work, alright!" because it would then be in a new document that would have default settings. Any other thoughts that might work?

Okay, I figured it out! Well, actually I didn't "figure it out," but rather, by just desperately trying different things, finally discovered a workaround. Whenever the "box" appears, I just right-click it, then choose "Cut," which gets rid of it, which then allows me to continue to enter text as wanted.

By the way, the problem appeared only after I had pasted a picture into the document. The "box" wouldn't show up on any of the pages that preceded that pasted picture, so it obviously has something to do with the pasting process. I searched the "Insert" menu and all of its sub-menus, but couldn't find anything that was obviously set to cause such a phenomenon to occur.

It sure would be nice to know exactly what happened to cause the original problem, though. I would like to know how to use Word properly, rather than stumbling my way along, hoping to accidentally find such workarounds. Which reminds me about my second question: Does anybody have a recommendation as to the best book/DVD/whatever, for learning Word and all of its fine points?

Search and locate file named 'normal.dot'. Don't open it, but right click and rename it to something like 'norm.dot'. Now open word and open a new blank and see what happens. If is a normal blank, save it as 'normal.dot'. See how it goes from there.

Good luck

Other option, if you don't have any other custom settings for defaults to worry about clearing, is a repair and restore in Word.
Click the Word button in the upper left corner. Select Word Options. Select Resources. Select Diagnose. Follow the prompts.
Keep me posted.