Strange MS Word problem

I haven't heard about anything similar. It sounds like some files that Word needs have gone missing, but since you've tried uninstalling and reinstalling that's a bit strange.

When did this start happening. Did you change or install anything just prior to that? Is there anything about your Mac that could prevent Word from having permissions to write to a location where it usually should be able to write this Global Template, whatever that it.

I don't have Word so I don't know where it's supposed to keep global data, but usually it would be someplace in /Library/Application Support.

What I would do if it happened to me, is to have a look around the /Library/Application Support folder and see if there were any Microsoft, Office or Word related folders there and if the permissions for those folders seemed correct. Then I'd lok into another user on the Mac (create one if needed) and see if Word did the same there. I'd repair permissions with Disk Utility just in case. Then I might look in /Users/<myuser>/Library/Preferences and move out any preference file that belonged to Microsoft Word and try again. If it still didn't work I'd do another uninstall and the search /Library and /Home/<myuser>/Library for anything Word related and make sure that everything was gone, and reinstall.

 

Office keeps data in your account's Documents folder, ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/. Your account's Application Support contains a Microsoft folder, ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/. However, it contains only one folder, Old Fonts. Microsoft installs nothing in the global Application Support folder, choosing instead to place everything where it is most easily corrupted or deleted.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/908466

 

if you really want to start fresh without any previous preferences or memory, you could go into the user library and delete the preferences for office, as well as the preferences that you may find under the main library, then also delete the stuff stored in the places MisterMe mentioned