I recently had problems with Word style getting messed up, so I figured I’d just zap the Normal.dot file and everything would be OK. It wasn’t, so I took more drastic measures.
It turns out you can use the registry editor to blow away Word’s settings, and Word will restore the defaults when you start it next. The key that holds the settings varies according to the version of Word that you’re running.
Warning: If you think this is a safe thing to do, don’t do it.