You don't need word, but it's nice to have.  Look for the file named 
"winword.exe".
If you have that, you can send it to your desktop as a shortcut.
If not, wordpad.exe or notepad.exe are both a part of windows, the same 
process will work.
notepad makes text files, but wordpad can create and read .doc files, which 
is the format for microsoft word.