http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5170
--- Comment #10 from Ronny Standtke Ronny.Standtke@gmx.net 2007-09-15 06:12:45 --- I got a chance to test the installation of Office 97 on a native Windows 2000 machine. I can confirm that the DDE problem does not appear.
Therefore this is a Wine bug.
I just tested with 0.9.45 and the bug is still there.