Office 97 on a Win2k Pro Machine

I installed Office 97 Pro on my Win2k machine which is connected to an NT Domain. I also installed the latest patch for Office 97 the SR2b patch. The problem is when i’m trying to open a document, word or in excel it’s giving me a message that the particular file is already open and that i can’t open two files even if they are in different directories. This message keeps on popping even though no one was using the other file. Is there something i need to do with my Win2k machine to avoid this message coz it’s really annoying. thank you for the help in advance.