Message Reading pane is Gray, message window transparent: Outlook 2003

[John Polcari]

Greetings:

My eternal gratitude to the person who figures this one out...
Message Reading pane is Gray, message window transparent. Also it give me an
error on text only message. I can create Email, but that's about it.

Outlook 2003 SP3, exchange 2003. Lenovo laptop:XP sp3
I've never seen this one before...
I've Tried:
repair/reinstallation of Outlook
New mail profile (of course)
New user (worth a shot)
and because I thought it was an HTML rendering issue, I upgraded IE6 to
IE7.
I've googled my heart out, and come up with nothing useful.

Here's the weird part: I could have sworn that it worked after the IE
upgrade. It was late, I went home and the user called me to say it was still
the same the next morning. Hey, I could've been looking at Outlook Web Mail,
I was so tired.. and come to think of it. I didn't try a variation like
creating a new mail profile *after* I upgraded IE.

Anybody seen this one before?

J3p0

 

[Peter]

Did you get this fixed? I have the same exact problem, however is I boot my
machine in safe mode (with networking), the reading pane works fine. Boot up
normally, it is grayed out again!

 

[Emma Crawford]

Hi,

I am also having the exact same problem as you both.
My reading pane is grey and I cannot open any messages.
The same happens in safe mode.
I had not upgraded to to IE.
Please, please if anyone has the solution I would be really grateful.

Emma Crawford