"Word is not available, not installed..."

[Robert Judge]

In XP, I have been using Word 2003 as my Outlook 2003 editor successfully for
a long time. However, today, I am repeatedly getting this message when I try
to respond to an email using Outlook:
"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."

I have unchecked and re-checked the boxes under Outlook/Options/Mail Format
(Use Microsoft Office Word 2003 203 to...") and re-booted. However, it
appears that checking the top one ("Use Microsoft Office Word 2003 to edit
e-mail message") does not want to stay checked.

How can I get Outlook 2003 to again use Word 2003 as my e-mail editor?

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Will Word start by itself? I.e., it is only "broken" when trying to use it
as the email editor for Outlook? Since you didn't mention this, I assume
that Word works okay otherwise.

I would try a couple of things. First, I would go back into Control Panel
and use the Repair option for Office 2003. (It helps if you cross your
fingers, face in the direction of Stonehenge, and chant in Gaelic when you
do this. Otherwise, repair might not work.)

If that doesn't fix it, I would try creating a new Windows user login
profile, and see if things work correctly for the new "user".

If it doesn't work from there, then the problem might be that an add-in or
<shudder> a Windows/Office update has changed/substituted one or more files
that Outlook/Word need to work together. Have you installed anything new
recently? Did you recently run Windows update? You might try dropping back
to a restore point (assuming you have one) from when it last worked and see
if that fixes it.

If it does work in a new Windows login, then the problem very likely is a
damaged registry entry. This can be tricky to diagnose... I would start by
renaming the Data and Options keys for Word, and see if that restores
operation:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Data

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options

I don't have Outlook 2003 installed anymore, so I can't look to see if there
are relevant candidates in Outlook's registry or in Word's mail-related
registry (Word 2007/Outlook 2007 work very differently, so this would be of
no help for this problem).