Missing mail recipient button in all Office 2003 applications

[Aaron H]

I am administering a small office network (5 PCs) and am running Microsoft
Office 2003 on all machines. I have configured Outlook 2003 accounts on all
5 of the PCs and am able to send/recieve mail from within Outlook without
fail. However the Office 2003 applications (specifically Word and Excel) on
two of the systems will not display the "Mail Recipient" button on the
toolbar.
I have attempted several prescribed solutions to no avail: adding the
button to the toolbar (obviously), setting up a new account within outlook
and making it the default account, setting outlook to be the default mail
application for the system (both internally and from within the Internet
Options -> Programs tab of the control panel), locating the Mapi32.dll file
in the correct location of the system folder, and reinstalling outlook 2003.
I have also read through 50+ articles on this issue, none of which were
able to provide a working solution to my problem. If anyone can tell me what
exactly I am overlooking, it would be much appreciated. I would prefer not
to have to reinstall the entire office suite as months worth of customization
may be lost.
Thank you, Aaron H.

 

[Deborah Jean]

I know you've tried everything but sometimes it's the simple answer that
eludes us. Did you reset the toolbars to thier original configuration? I'm
sure you probably tried it but I had to ask.

 

[Aaron H]

Did you reset the toolbars to thier original configuration? I'm

sure you probably tried it but I had to ask.

Hi Deborah, thanks for the reply, but yes I had tried reseting the toolbars.

I also tried removing the whole preferences file that stores the toolbar
customization info, since this file is re-created when the application starts
if it is missing...
still no luck.

I suspect the cause is that the two machines experiencing this problem had
office 2003 installed seperately from outlook 2003, and the slight
discrepancy in their version ID's may explain it. The three machines that
are running under very similar circumstance, but are working properly, had
outlook 2003 installed with office 2003 so the version ID's are identical.

This is my last stab, to re-install the entire office suite (including
office 2003) from the same disk, and see if it solves the problem.

Thanks for the support though.

best,
aaron