Q I have just loaded Word 97 over Office 95 and can't get rid of the message telling me that the Tahoma font is not present on opening Word. It suggests exiting Word and re-running setup. I have done this but to no avail. Help!

A In Microsoft Office 97, the Tahoma font is used to display text in dialogue boxes and menus, replacing the MS Sans Serif and Arial fonts that were used by previous versions of Office. All Office 97 programs (and Publisher 98) usually install Tahoma on your computer during the setup process, and will look for it each time you launch them. Word may be telling you the truth ù it can't find the Tahoma font, probably because it was not installed during setup for some reason, or because the font has moved since the setup program finished. This error can appear even after the Office setup program reports a successful installation.

If re-running the setup program doesn't fix the problem, you could try to install the Tahoma font manually. To do this, put your Office 97 CD in your CD-ROM drive, click StartûSettingsûControl Panel, and double-click the Fonts icon. When the Fonts window opens, select FileûInstall New Font. In the Add Fonts window, select your CD-ROM drive from the Drives list, then in the Folders list, open the OS folder, followed by the Fonts folder. Hold down the <Ctrl> key, select Tahoma and Tahoma Bold from the list of fonts, and click OK. Close any open windows, and reboot your computer.

caption: If the Tahoma font is missing, you will need to install it. Word 97 won't work properly without it

Both Windows 95 and 98 have a limit of approximately 1000 fonts. This fix should work if you have less than 1000 fonts on your system. If you have more than that, you'll have to sacrifice some to make room for Tahoma.