OFF97: Error Messages When You Click Open, Save, or Save As (294803)

SYMPTOMS

When you use one of the Office 97 programs listed at the beginning of this article, you may experience one of the following symptoms:

In Word 97, when you click Save, Save as, or Open (on the File menu), you may receive the following error message:
Word has insufficient memory, do you want to save document1 as a rescued document?
In Outlook, when you open a message, you receive the following error message:
Can't open this item. Unable to load "riched20.dll". You may be out of memory, out of system resources, or missing a .DLL file.
In Excel, when you click Save, Save as, or Open (on the File menu), nothing happens. The Open and Save dialog boxes do not appear, and you receive no error message.
When you start Office Binder, you receive the following error message:
Cannot start Office Binder. Run the Office Setup program again to restore any missing or damaged files, and then try to start Office Binder again.
In PowerPoint, when you click Save, Save as, or Open (on the File menu), or when you click Open an existing presentation in the Startup dialog box, you receive the following error message:
An error occurred creating a file dialog. Please save presentations, exit, and then restart PowerPoint.

CAUSE

This behavior is caused by one of the following:

Incorrect access permissions to the file Riched20.dll -or-
The wrong version of the file Riched20.dll on the computer

NOTE: This only applies if your computer's operating system is Microsoft Windows 2000 or Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, and your hard disk is formatted as NTFS.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, follow these procedures in the order they are presented.

If Permissions Are Incorrect for Riched20.dll

You must have Read access to the Riched20.dll file for Windows NT 4.0, or Read & Execute permission for the Riched20.dll file for Windows 2000.

Click Start, point to Find, and then click Files or folders.
In the Named box, type Riched20.dll and then click Find Now.
In the Search Results list, right-click Riched20.dll, and verify that the permissions are set so that users have read access to this file.

To change permissions on this file, you must follow the appropriate steps for your operating system. Check your operating system documentation.

If the Wrong Version of Riched20.dll Is on the Computer

If the preceding steps do not resolve the issue, you must extract a new version of the Riched20.dll file from the original Office CD-ROM to replace the existing version of Riched20.dll. To do this, follow these steps:

Click Start, point to Find, and then click Files or Folders. In the Named box, type Riched20.dll and then click Find Now.
In the Search Results list, right-click Riched20.dll, and then click Rename. Rename the extension .dll to .old.
Insert the Office 97 CD-ROM into your CD-ROM drive.
Verify that Riched20.dll is in the Named box. In Look In, click to select the CD-ROM drive from the list, and then click Find Now. In the Search Results list, copy the file to the Windows\System32 folder.