Outlook 2003 freezes when using word as editor

[Pawan]

I have been using Outlook 2003 for years and use Word 2003 as the email
editor. Suddenly a a few weeks ago whenever I opened an email, replied,
forwarded, or started a new email Outlook seemed to freeze or even crash
completely. This problem goes away if I remove Word as my email editor. I
don't know why this has suddenly started to happen. I did not
install/uninstall anything at the time that may have affected Outlook or
Word. In any case I have uninstalled and reinstalled all of Office 2003 but
the problem remains. I have also repaired my installation, without
improvement. Could this be due to a Microsoft security update? How can I fix
this problem as I prefer to use Word as my editor rather than the inbuilt
Outlook editor. This is really annoying me. Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

 

[Pawan]

After weeks of experimenting I think I have finally resolved my own problem.
I have Adobe Acrobat Professional on my machine and have had it for some time
- long before the Outlook freezing problem started to occur. This has some
kind of hooks into Word and adds an extra menu item next to the standard Help
menu. This has a self update feature also. Something must have updated one
night this month - be it Windows, Office or Acrobat that conflicted in the
order it was applied. I carried out a repair on Acrobat and now my Outlook
problem seems to have disappeared. I also removed Acrobat Reader just to tidy
up, as it wasn't necessary while I had Acrobat Pro, but I don't think that
had anything to do with my problem, although you never know. Hope this helps
someone else.