Did you see tacit's post regarding Word docs and my response, in which I noted that EasyFind now finds my Excel spreadsheets...
Yes, I did and thanks to both of you.
Now, I remain wondering why Spotlight isn't doing the kind of searches it once did (i.e. it no longer finds Word documents from text in the documents) and if Kevin's thought "....if the word importer is not installed properly that would affect the ability to search by content of word files..." means I need to do something like a system re-install, as Jon recommended.
How's that for a run-on sentence?
A full re-install is not something I'm anxious to do, in case something goes terribly awry. However, if something's not working right...