Outlook 2003 strips body text after attaching a file to a draft

This is a strange issue and after a couple of weeks of searching for a solution, I have not found a similar problem.

This is the deal:
A user types an email and it saves as a draft, either automatically or manually
When finished, the user attaches a file (any type of file) abd sends.
The email arrives at it’s destination without any text in the body. The attachment arrives without any problems, but the message body is gone. It doesn’t even show in the sent items folder.

Our users are locked out of composing email in HTML or Plain Text format, though I tried that as an admin and still got the same problem.

Any help or suggestions would be veru much appreciated.