OL can't find Word?

[Joe McGuire]

I am not sure if this is an OL or a Word question but it is the latest in a
series of odd error messages generated by Outlook. (The most recent was a
language pack message, kindly answered by Mr. Sparnaaij) I am running
Office Professional 2003 including OL and Word. Tonight I started to reply
to an e-mail and suddenly got this goofy message:

"Microsoft Word is set to be your e-mail editor. However, Word is
unavailable, not installed or is not the same version as Outlook. The
Outlook e-mail editor will be used instead."

Suddenly my font turned blue and my signature changed to a different font.
And that was the end of Word as my e-mail editor until I restarted OL. Odd
thing is that I had Word running at the same time and had a Word document
open at the time. And of course, Word 2003 is the same version (I assume)
as Outlook 2003 since they are on on my Office 2003 CD. Therefore, by
process of elimination, Word must have been unavailable. While I am using
it? Is there a problem here? Or should this be added to the growing list
of just plain weird things about Office/Outlook/Word that I should just
ignore? I think this has happened once or twice in the past but I never
paid attention.

More: I now see that this happens only when replying to this particular
e-mail message. Maybe there is nothing wrong with OL except that it is
easily upset.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

There could be something weird with the message. Is that the same message
that produced the Korean Language pack issue?
Is it really only this message or any message that for instance is in the
Plain Text or HTML or Rich Text format?
When the issue is consistent for any message (new, reply, message format
etc...) and a restart of both Word and Outlook doesn't fix it start Word via
winword.exe /a

See http://www.msoutlook.info/question/68

 

[Joe McGuire]

It the Korean thing was from a different e-mail message. Since thie "Can't
find Word" thing seems limited kot this message, and since there was a
problem opening one of two *.tif files that had been attached, I will assume
it was something peculiarly wrong with that particular e-mail as opposed to
a wider problem. I'll get back if the problem recurs. Thanks.

 

[Chad]

I am experiencing the same issue. I started winword with the /a
switch but it doesn't happen.

It appears to happen to e-mails with RTF encoding.

However, it has also happened to other users now. Any idea on what is
causing this?

 

[Chad]

I am experiencing the same issue.  I started winword with the /a
switch but it doesn't happen.

It appears to happen to e-mails with RTF encoding.

However, it has also happened to other users now.  Any idea on what is
causing this?

What the issue is, Outlook is unable to start Winword.exe until it is
called when you open an e-mail. For users which this is working
correctly for, winword.exe is opened when Outlook is opened. Any
ideas?