Sharepoint users with Office 2003 installed on their desktop often complain about the items in document libraries opening in the Office viewer rather than the full application. To disable this behavior, open Word, go to Tools Options General and uncheck "Allow Starting in Reading Layout". This should force the document to open in full Word/Excel/PowerPoint.
Note that the document will still open in read-only mode. To edit the document and save a new version back to the document library, choose Edit from the drop-down menu for the item (proper permissions required).
