Open Office on Win7

Actually a two-pronged question:

1) My Open Office Writer ... when I click the Open button, the little window that pops up does not give me access to Desktop. It is limited and I haven't a clue how to change this little panel.

2) I have Win7 Ultimate and I would expect an equivalent to Windows WORD. There must be something here. I am a writer and I want an awesome word-processing program. Where/what is the Win WORD equivalent on WIn7 Ultimate?

Thanks

Oh, yeah, before I forget ... I've received some good help on this forum; how do I thank the donors in a formal manner?

1) Can you post a screenshot of what you are talking about?

2) You can download OpenOffice from OpenOffice.org, or you can purchase a copy of Microsoft Office, which includes Word.

Is the beta for MS Office 2010 no longer available? I just downloaded it earlier in the week. But I replaced it with the full version yesterday.

When did your problem start? Yiou might consider uninstalling and reinstalling open office.

1) When you click on Open and the navigation window opens up, it is devided into 3 parts by default. On the very left hand side, use the scrollbar to slide up and you should see Desktop in the Favorites list

2) The closest thing to MS Word that comes installed in Win7 is called WordPad. It's a bit more fully functioned that the WordPad of old but for the closest free option, try Open Office (the MS Word equilivent is called Open Office Writer)