Isn't there a little prog that comes with Office2000 that's supposed to speed up how fast Office starts? Not exactly the problem you're having, true, but might as well run it once and see if it helps.
I prefer to avoid MSOffice at all costs, though; the thing that just amazes me about Office is the fact that the entire suite of applications sucks ass but that people still insist on using it. I run MacOS, so my preferred alternative is AppleWorks - however, there are other programs you can use (that can read/write Office formats), so I'd do some shopping around for a better program if I were you . . .