Member Avatar for Secret Agent

I have Outlook 2003 which has been working just fine the entire time since I got it in June. I had it already in taskbar and loaded on my pc fine. Went to bed, came back to reply to an email and suddenly when I hit "reply" it hangs the entire software.

I reboot the pc, restart Outlook and click reply again...same problem it hangs when "starting word as outlook editor..." message.

What's the problem? I have no spyware and did not make any changes whatsoever to my system since last night or yesterday in as well. No installs, nothing.

Specs:
Winxp Pro
Office 2003

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Dani AI

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The message "Starting Word as your e-mail editor" is the giveaway. Outlook 2003 hands off the editor to Word, so anything that trips up Word (templates, add-ins, or the printer subsystem) can freeze Reply. is right to isolate by turning off the Word editor to confirm the cause. Also note 's printer finding: Word queries the default printer to lay out the page; an offline or sleeping network printer can stall the editor until Windows times out.

Quick way to narrow it down:

Start > Run > outlook.exe /safe
Start > Run > winword.exe /safe

If Safe Mode works, disable add-ins next. In Outlook: Tools > Other > Advanced Options > Add-In Manager and COM Add-ins. In Word: Templates and Add-ins. Re-enable one at a time to find the offender. Then reset Word’s template: close both apps and rename
%appdata%\Microsoft\Templates\Normal.dot
to
Normal.old
(Word will rebuild it). If needed, run Office’s Detect and Repair from any Office app’s Help menu.

Printer check: set a local, always-on device as the default printer (for a quick test, use Microsoft Office Document Image Writer that installs with Office 2003), then try Reply. If that fixes it, keep a local default and leave the network printer as secondary, or ensure the network printer is powered and reachable before launching Outlook.

For the slow attachment browse mentioned, remove dead mapped drives and unreachable network locations, then try again. If the hang persists after the steps above, create a fresh Outlook profile (Control Panel > Mail > Show Profiles > Add) and test before migrating data.

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Member Avatar for cSc0911

Did you try replying without using Word as your email editor?

Open Outlook 2003.

Click on Tools | Options

Click on the Mail Format tab and uncheck both:

"Use Microsoft Office Word 2003 to edit e-mail messages"
and
"Use Microsoft Office Word 2003 to read Rich Text e-mail messages"

See if that helps.

Also, if you open up Microsoft Word first and then open Outlook, do you have problems when you try replying to email?

Member Avatar for TechMaster

.

Member Avatar for Tokyoprince

Hi,
Sorry I don't have an answer but I have a similiar problem. When I try to add an attachment I click on the paperclip and it defaults to 'my documents' folder but then when I click on the drop down to change folders, it hangs up. It does eventually come back but takes a long time and then hangs again whenever I try to go to another folder level. I hope we get an answer soon.

XP Pro SP2 with Outlook 2003

Member Avatar for cSc0911

.

Wow...now that's a plethora of information... I bookmarked that one.

Only problem is I don't see where you can do a "Search". I don't see the option anywhere...

Member Avatar for larrym

Anyone ever solve this?

Member Avatar for Tokyoprince

I posted a problem about this and found a solution, or rather aworkround. My Outlook 2003 hanged up whenever my network printer wasn't turned on. The problem dissappears as soon as I swicth the printer on. Not quite sure why this all happens though.


Tokyoprince

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