Turning Off a Startup Sound

Oliver is bothered by the sound that is played every time Word is started. He wants to turn the sound off, but is unclear on how to do this.

Believe it or not, the startup sound is not controlled from within Word, but from Windows itself. You need to start the Control Panel, and then double-click the Sound applet (on some versions of Windows the applet may have a similar name, such as Sounds and Audio Devices). The control you want is on the Sounds tab of the resulting dialog box. (Click here to see a related figure.)

Using the scrollable Program list, find the Open Program event. Click once on it, and then change the Sounds drop-down list to None. When you click on OK, your change is saved and you should not hear a sound when you next start Word--or any other Windows program, for that matter.