Instead of showing the document properties, my Word 2007 was showing nice “The Document Information Panel was unable to load” message when I was invoking Prepare > Properties. Finally I got tired of this and decided to do something about it. Found two solutions on the Internet.
One was to disable System Event Notification service, and, of course, it was not working (I would wonder if it would, as I do not see any link between SENS and document properties).
The other one was a bit more elaborate. It argued, that the missing “%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office12\1033\ipedintl.dll” is causing the issue, and copying this file into the abovementioned location would restore Word’s functionality. The file was missing in my case; I found it in “%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Web Designer Tools\Office12\1033\”, copied it over to “%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office12\1033\”, and voilaz, Word now shows the document properties panel fine.
UPDATE I had to reinstall my PC. So, fresh Windows XP SP3 and fresh Office 2007 with SP1 – same problem appeared straight after the installation :) . Really sucks (but at least now I knew how to fix it!)
UPDATE 2 I had to reinstall my work PC now, and again the same shit, except now I used Office 2007 Ultimate SP1. But now there was a twist – ipedintl.dll was nowhere on the hard disk… I found it on Office installation disk in the “\Office.en-us\OfficeLR.cab” file (.cab is an archive file, like .zip or .7z or similar). It is called IPEDINTL.DLL_1033, and you should extract it to the above mentioned “%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office12\1033\” directory (using e.g. 7-zip) and rename it to ipedintl.dll. Problem fixed.
Roman Hnatiuk 
Thanks for posting this. I’ve been trying to figure this out.
http://blog.zacksfiasco.com/2008/10/ms-office-2007-information-panel.html
gee….I have only been trying to figure out how to fix this thing for a year…. ;-) Thanks much….I found my missing dll in my Groove directory.
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Thank you for your post. I also have this problem.
However, when I ran search for the file ipedintl.dll, I found it in two different locations, that is, in C:\program files\microsoft office\office 12\1033 and in folder \3082 within same path.
There is no folder Microsoft Web Designer in my version (MSOFFice Enterprise 2007).
Any ideas? Thank you very much!
Hi Paula! Very weird, I must admit. 1033 and 3082 denote different languages (1033 is English, but no idea what is 3082 – too lazy to check now). I updated my post regarding the problem and Office Ultimate (see UPDATE 2 above), but then again, it seems you have some other problem and I am afraid I cannot help you in solving that :( . You can try to do what I wrote in UPDATE 2 (i.e. getting ipedintl.dll from the cab-file), but then again, I am not sure it will help in your case. You need to try it…
Here’s some more weirdness to add to this confusing situation –
I found that after installing Office 2007 on the same PC as Office 2003, I ended up with this symptom of the Document Properties error in Excel 2007, and the added result that Excel 2007 won’t exit.
When I went looking for IPEDINTL.DLL on my hard drive it only existed in:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\1033
Using your “Update 2” information above, I was able to extract IPEDINTL.DLL the backup Office disc I previously created for my Office OEM installation (http://www.microsoft.com/office/backup/)
Using 7-zip, I found the file in “Office Professional 2007 Backup X13-82303.exe\OfficeLR.cab\” and extracted it to where I found it on my hard drive in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\1033
But that didn’t fix my installation because I have both Office 2003 and Office 2007 installed.
I had to copy IPEDINTL.DLL to:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Microsoft Office 2007\Office12\1033
While it’s obvious now, it required a fair amount of grief, so I thought I’d share this here to help others avoid this too.
Thanks Roman for this post.
Thanks for this – you’re a genius – it solved the problem straightaway. Where on earth do you start to figure that out??
Just to note… if you are using 64-bit windows you will need the following path:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\1033
The one mentioned in the article exists but does not help.
Thanks for posting this… dug me out of a hole :)
Roman, I have the same problem it only happens with documents in one document library in SharePoint. I have no problem viewing the document panel in other Word documents in other document libraries on the same SharePoint site. Does that sound like this missing ipedintl.dll problem?
Hi Kelly,
I do not think so, to be honest – if it would be the missing dll, you would have this problem always. But then, again, I have no idea what could be the reason in your case – I am not really a technical expert in Word, and even less in SharePoint. Could it be something related to permissions? Does anyone else have similar issue with that library?
Thanks for the reply. It is a good suggestion. I am the site owner so I have the highest permissions on that library, so I didn’t think of it as being a permissions problem. I will get people with different permission levels to try it out. Thanks!