
Hard to say - depends which bit of Norton is doing the zapping and what you mean by zapping.
Have you checked that you have not pressed the big red 'no entry' button on the firewall menu that blocks all traffic?
If it's the antivirus program that is doing the zapping, if you're sure your friend has scanned the Word document before sending it you could always disable autoprotect and do a right-click manual scan on the attachment before opening it. In the antivirus program options its likely the Norton default is to automatically quarantine, back-up and repair a suspect file. You could always click the next option down, ie. to ask you what to do next before Norton does anything with the suspect attachment.
Worth a try? Have you tried asking Norton at the Symantec website?
What about your friend sticking it on a floppy and mailing it to you - cheap. If all else fails could your friend cut and paste from the Word document and send you the text in an e-mail? You'd have to cut and paste into Word and reformat but at least you'd not have to type it all out again...
HTH :)