Initiating OL 2007 email message from MS Office 2007 doesn't work

[Jim]

If I try to initiate an email message from an MS Office 2007 document when my
Outlook 2007 has not been previously started and open as an applicaiton, the
Office document "hangs" (perpetual whirly circle) and has to be terminated
with the Task Manager. This is the case with Excel and Word at least. The
command sequence I'm trying to use is [Office Circle] > Send > E-mail.

Things work fine if OL 2007 is open as an application before I do that
command sequence. But, like I say, the Office App hangs if OL 2007 is not
open.

I'm using Office 2007 and I'm pretty sure that SP-2 is installed - but I
can't figure out how to confirm that. I'm using Vista but I can't figure out
how to tell what version of Vista.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.