Windows 8 - Problems with Microsoft Office 2003

I installed Windows 8 a couple of weeks ago and appeared not to have too many problems. I installed and have been using Microsoft Office 2003 quite happily for the past week or so. Unfortunately in the last few days this changed. The main issue is that I cannot

use the open dropdown box from the top menu for word or excel. I click File, Open and nothing happens the dialogue box that is normally populated with a list of files is now displayed completely blank. I have now compounded the problem because I decided to

uninstall / re-install Office 2003 only to find that I cannot now even use the Outlook menu to configure and select my Outlook data files. Once again if I try to add a data file the dialogue box is displayed blank so I am unable o select a file to open..

I have experimented by trying some of the other dropdown options in word and excel only to find that any dropdown box that would normally be populated with a list of files is shown blank. I can open files by directly accessing it in windows and clicking it.

At which point the spreadsheet or word documsnt opens as expected.

Seeing too many other forum logs about sudden unexplained issues following windows upates to be comfortable about this version of windows.

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