Vista - Opening Office Programmes / Permission

I have a Laptop that has Vista and I have some problems with opeing Word.

Firstly - I can open Excel fine and it does not ask for a permission from
the User Account and Simply opens.

Next when I open Word - it asks for permission - why word and not Excel???

Lastly, I have a video analysis software programme. Inside this programme I
can click an Icon to load a word document to take notes on a particular
video. When I click this, it asks for permission but when I click yes, word
appears to load ( I see the small logo in the middle of the screen) but it
never appears - ie fully loads. However when I check Task manager it is
running???

I must have clicked somewhere or changed a permission unknowingly as it used
to work fine

Please help

Russell