whenever I close word I am not prompted to save the current document I am
working on and thus the newly created document is gone. This is Word 2003
and it was installed by Dell when I purchased the computer.

That can be a sign of a virus, template corruption, or registry corruption.
Take a look here for steps to take:

http://www.officearticles.com/word/s...osoft_word.htm

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Please respond in the newsgroups so everyone can follow along.
http://www.herbtyson.com
"lavoww" wrote in message
...
whenever I close word I am not prompted to save the current document I am
working on and thus the newly created document is gone. This is Word 2003
and it was installed by Dell when I purchased the computer.