Why is my Microsoft Word window always on top of other windows?

For one reason or another, my Word suddenly decided to stay always on top of all other windows. This is terribly annoying. The odd thing is: of three documents I have open, two are on top of everything else, and one behaves normal.

I found one other mention of this behavior. I wonder whether this is a known bug and whether there's a workaround. Sometimes closing all windows helps, but later the behavior creeps back. Other Office products don't seem to show this behavior.

I'm using Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010, 14.0.4760.1000 (64 bit).

This single-line AutoHotKey script can be used to toggle the always-on-top behavior of the current window whenever Windows-A is pressed:

#a:: Winset, Alwaysontop, , A

Here's another answer I found online which doesn't require rebooting:

1. In Outlook go to Tools → Options
2. Switch to the "Mail Format" tab
3. Uncheck "Use Microsoft Office Word 2003 to edit e-mail messages"
4. Close Outlook and Word
5. Re-open Outlook and Word
6. In Outlook go to Tools → Options
7. Switch to the "Mail Format" tab
8. Re-check "Use Microsoft Office Word 2003 to edit e-mail messages"

It should now no longer be always on top.

I just upgraded from Office 2007 to Office 2010 on Windows 7 Professional Service Pack 1. When the Word document was open I could not open any other application in front of it.

I resolved the issue by going to Add-ins then Actions. I only had two enabled 1) Address 2) Instant Messaging Contacts. I disabled both of them.

I had this same problem with Word in Office 2010 and after looking at the link to Matt Fleming's site in bdoserror's answer to this problem, was able to use the solution in the comment there.

I closed both Outlook and Word and started the Task Manager. There was still a Winword.exe process listed under the Processes tab. I killed that duplicate process and restarted Outlook and Word and now Word was behaving correctly.