Continual pop-up in Word 'Connecting to Office.Microsoft.com' asking for credentials

I have been in contact with MS and have been informed that this issue is corrected in an update to Office 2007, 2010, and 2013. If you have one of these versions and have installed the latest updates, you should not be experiencing the problem. For Office 2003 and earlier, the manual Registry edit will be required.

This problem may be caused by the translation service crash. Please use another service site to replace the current one.

Here you go:

1. Windows + R, type regedit, press Enter
2. Go to registry path HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Research\Sources{88686849-2DD9-474D-9300-778E3336FA5D}
3. Change both QueryPath and RegistrationPathfrom **http://office.microsoft.com/Research/query.asmx** to  **http://rr.office.microsoft.com/Research/query.asmx**
4. Restart the Word 2010.

Whoops, embarrassment personified.

I could have deleted this thread but decided to leave it as a reminder that computers don’t always behave the way we expect them to.

Evidently my 10 year old grandson was using this laptop this afternoon, which I allow him to do as he’s a clever little chap who has used Windows for about four years. He also likes to tinker and I have just discovered that he has been copying/updating from/to a USB memory stick which is plugged into the router (NAS) and accessed throughout the network.

In the past I have had minor ‘not ready’ issues when attempting to navigate the stick too quickly. I have just opened the stick and ‘repaired’ it and voila Word is back to normal.

Who would have thought that an external device could produce such an error in Word?