Cannot save & recover Microsoft word documents since recent updates.

Ever since we loaded the recent updates all of our old saved word documents under "My Documents" have become "Not Available" and show minimal bites. Also, cannot save or access new word documents. We get "file NORMAL (global template) already exists, do you want to replace?" If we say "no" it keeps looping back to the screen. If we say "yes" we can get back to the the desktop. Please, can anyone help? We run Windows XP.