Connecting To a Discussion Server

If your office has an intranet in which the Microsoft Office Server Extensions are available, you can utilize the Discussions feature available with Word 2000, Word 2002 and Word 2003. To take part in any discussion, or to start your own discussion, you will need to connect to a discussion server. (Again, this is a server that has the extensions installed and operational.)

To connect to a discussion server, follow these steps:

1. Open a document that you want to use in a discussion.
2. Choose Online Collaboration from the Tools menu. Word displays a submenu.
3. Choose Web Discussions from the submenu. The Discussions toolbar appears at the bottom of the program window.

At this point, if you have not set up Word for online discussions before, Word displays the Add or Edit Discussion Servers dialog box. (Click here to see a related figure.)

Here you must provide the address (URL) of the discussion server, along with a name you want to use to refer to the server. If you have questions about what should be entered in this dialog box, contact your network administrator.

Once you have defined your discussion server location, all you need to do in the future is select the server you want to use for your discussions. You are then ready to use the discussion capabilities of Word.