Microsoft made a flaw in their Office installations which makes installing multiple versions of Microsoft Office hard. If you open one version of Word, it takes a couple minutes to “Configure” itself. If you close and re-open the same version, it is fine, but if you try to open the other version, you have to wait 5 minutes for it to configure again. This basically makes using two Office editions almost impossible, and very annoying. Lucky there is a quick registry work-around that allows you to run two versions of Office without having to wait for each to “Configure”.

1. Run the version of Word that you want to have associated with your .doc, .dot, .docx, etc files, then close Word.2. Double click, in Windows Explorer in My Documents or another folder a .doc file to be sure it opens in the correct version you refer to use then close all running Office apps.

3. Start > Run > Type regedit and hit Enter

4. File > Export and save a backup copy of your registry just in case.

5. Navigate down in HKEY_CURRENT_USER to
\Software\Microsoft\Office

6. For Word 2007 (v12.0) continue to navigate through

\12.0\Word\Options

and once there right click on the ‘Options’ branch in the left panel and create a new ‘DWORD’ named NoReReg , then set the value
of NoReReg to 1.

7. For Word 2003 (v11.0), follow the same steps as in 2f, but use the area for Word 2003, which would be

\11.0\Word\Options

8. For Word 2002 (v10.0), follow the same steps as in 2f, but use the area for Word 2002 (Office XP), which would be

\10.0\Word\Options

After that, you should see the annoying configuration go away! If one version does become corrupt or needs an update, just delete the DWORD you just created, and it should be back to normal!

Running Office XP and Office 2007 [TechArena Forums]