No fix is planned.
I'll share what I use that is very XP compatible. http://www.openoffice.org
In closing, there are other bugs when running Office 97 on XP. And again, there are no plans to fix them.
Bob
When I try to open a Word document I get an error message that says "<Path & Filename> are being used by <username>. Do you want to make a copy?
It says this even if I just finished creating the document and saving it...then closing it and opening it again...I get this message.

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