Since installing, cant open any Office WORD files -says "File xxx is not availab

It says, “File xyz is not available.” in the drop box it continues:

You may be encoutering this message because an anti-virus program is not allowing the file to open. This can be caused by one of two conditions. Either the anti-virus program needs to be updated (due to a compability problem with this application) or there is a virus in the file but the anti-virus program cannot properly remove or process the virus it has found.
In either case, the file you are attempting to open should be treated as infected until you have updated your anti-virus software to the latest updates available from the vendor. All major anti-virus software manufacturers have created updates to address known compatibility problems with Office applications. They also usually provide a virus signature file that is available for download from the Internet and must be updated regularly to properly scan for all known forms of viruses.
If you are experiencing this problem on a computer where a new version of anti-virus software was recently installed from a CD-ROM, it is advised to connect to the Internet and download the latest updates available from the vendor.
If you are experiencing this problem on a computer where the latest version of the software is installed, all signature files are up to date, and the file will not open (but other files do) then it is very likely the file is infected with a virus and the anti-virus program cannot remove the infection.
There is also the possibility the file is corrupt (damaged) and cannot be properly handled by either the anti-virus software or the affected Office application. In this case, it may be necessary to attempt recovery of the file using the related recovery utilities that may be available with the application (not all applications have file recovery or repair capabilities).
For more information about this issue, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 835404.

So now what??? I CAN open Office Publisher files, just no Word files. I tried creating a new Word file, saved and closed and then went to re-open and got the same message. ARGH!!! Please advise. Thanks!! Corinne Logan

Which was your old antivirus? How did you uninstall it?
Are you using avast now?

Was using Norton, deleted thru Add or Remove Program files and now it seems like avast is running fine.

I should say that Avast is running fine [size=10pt]BUT [/size] still cant open any of my Word files!

This has a familiar ring to it, NAV is a pig to get rid of and gets its hooks into everywhere.

A link worth looking at, which is a program removal tool that can remove the remnants of a number of different Norton Programs:
Removing your Norton program using SymNRT