[Spunger]

Ok.......so I had a crash and rebuilt everything (Windows XP Pro) and after downloading and installing every patch for it I installed Office XP Pro and updated it to service pack 3.

No matter what I try my Outlook gives me a message telling me how word is my default email editor but it can't find it or it's busy and blah blah. No error codes, no nothing. Then it opens my mail in some super primitive editing tool (no spelling, no changing text etc...). I've uninstalled office and reinstalled it with the same outcome. I almost was think of switching to office2k but even then I don't know if it will slove my problem.

I've tried every internet fix I could think of and find. Nothing has worked. It's annoying when trying to reply to an email and have it pop up the editing prompt. I have word installed and it works fine so I'm just sure what the problem is.

Any ideas?

 

[Ciaran]

Did you turn off Word as the e-mail editor in Outlook? (Tools-Options)

What happenes if you launch Outlook, then kill Word via the task manager (Processes tab)?

I HATE Word as email ed. Frikkin sucks!

 

[Spunger]

I did check that. That's the only option I have for a email editor.

What's funny is my comp crashed and I had to re-do everything. I updated Windows XP, and it updated Office XP (well 2003) for me. After that, outlook wouldn't work right. I have every update from Windows Update and it still goof's every single time.

It drives me nuts. Maybe I should try to find a copy of Office XP (newer than word/outlook 2003) and see if it works any better.

 

[habitatxskate]

i don't think you would get the error in windows 2000 as you suggested.

 

[binary visions]

i don't think you would get the error in windows 2000 as you suggested.

But, the reality is, that you have no clue whatsoever if he would still get the error. Please don't offer advice when you have no idea what you were talking about. I can and will moderate your bad advice in this forum, since it can cause a lot of problems for people.

He didn't even say Windows 2000, he said Office 2000.

I did check that. That's the only option I have for a email editor.

You mean, you can't uncheck that box that says "Use Word for my default email editor"? In Tools/Options, then the Mail Format tab? Make sure "Send in this message format:" says Plain Text just to make sure that Outlook can compose them properly.

If that's the case, I might try uninstalling office, and then installing only Microsoft Outlook. See if that fixes the composition problem. If so, you can try installing Word seperately.

 

[Spunger]

Here's an update, I dunno if I fixed it or not but now seems to be working...

SO......I was still having the problem. Not that I wanted word as my email editor BUT it would throw that error every time. Plus it kept checking my PST file everytime I opened outlook up. This was Office XP. So I decided to uninstall it and try office 2000.

Office 2000 gave me some other errors in general. It installed with no problems so getting error messages was funny. When I went to check mail profiles there was only one in there so I thought something was funny. I tried looking up the new error messages that it was giving me but no luck.

I ended up uninstalling both office xp and 2000, deleting all mail profiles, and reinstalling office xp. This time around I did NOT install service pack 2 (or 3) for office. I setup outlook like I would normally, and so far so good. I had to register some .dll file in the registry due to an error it was giving me when I would try and send a email but after that it's worked great. So I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Man it sucks though going through all this crap with office and windows. I never had the problem before and I think it's something to do with updating service packs. My previous install I didn't do anything with the service packs and it worked fine for years and the one time I decide to utilize a service pack it makes my outlook not work. Go figure