Brian wrote:
Can anyone tell me why Word wants to access the internet when it is
started?

It also seems to open slowly?

Thanks.

Hi Brian,

There are a couple of possibilities.

One is that you have Word set to get help and "interesting stuff" from the
Microsoft web site. To turn this off, you can click the bottom item in the
Help task pane, "Online Content Settings", and uncheck the box in the dialog
marked "Show content and links from Microsoft Office Online".

Another is that you're opening a document whose template is (or was) on a
server. Word will spend quite a lot of time looking for templates that are
no longer where they used to be. Sometimes you can cure this in Tools
Templates and Add-Ins by attaching a local template and resaving the
document.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org