Send To/Mail works in Word but not Excel

Office 97 + Outlook 2000. Using File/Send To/Mail Recipients works differently from different apps. On first user, when sending from Word it works fine but when sending from Excel it says “can’t load mail system”. Outlook was open at the time. Not a file size issue – won’t even send a blank document. I have another user who can send fine in Excel but then when sending in Word it doesnt send as an attachment but as the body text. I have tried with and without using Word as the email editorand the Outlook format is MS Outlook rich text. I have tried to replace mapi32.dll. I have recreated the Send To Mail REcipient shortcut and tried the switches /a and /ipm.note. Any ideas? thanks.