OfficeXP (Word/Excel) Customizing.

I’ve got OffXP on WinXP (both OEMs); in Word/Excel, I open and check TaskPane and it appears, I . But when I close that doc/xls and open a new file (even within that same session), there’s no TaskPane and I need to do it all over again. Shouldn’t the software “remember” my defaults? What’s the way out?