Last year, I decided to forgo the Microsoft Office Suite packages and just went with the stand alone programs of Outlook 2007 and Word 2007.
Well after the allowable refund period, I attempted to add-in the purchased and free stationary I had accumulated to the Outlook 2007 program. Much to my surprise, my stationary buttons were dead and I was not able to do anything with stationary. I could not even access any of the normally included themes that come with Outlook.
After trying everything I knew (which isn’t much considering I’m not, at all, tech savvy) with no success, I searched on-line and, at the time, couldn’t find a single similar problem posted on the Microsoft, or any other, website that I checked.
I contacted Microsoft in January 2008 and was advised as follows:
“Based on my research, if we install Outlook 2007 stand-alone on Windows XP Professional SP2, Windows XP Media Center Edition or Vista, the Theme is unavailable.
I am sorry that this is a by-design feature since the Outlook 2007 stand-alone version could not use the theme of Office suites. There is no fix yet. So, I suggest you refund your Outlook 2007 stand-alone version and then purchase Office Standard 2007 for instead.”
Well, like I said in my first paragraph (and which was made known to the support tech that provided the above message) it was well beyond the refund period. I made several attempts with the vendors, and at the Microsoft website, to get them to exchange the programs for a suite with me paying the difference but was not successful in getting them to do this. I, instead, must sit and wait on a ‘fix’ for a feature that is most commonly included with any email program including Outlook Express. (Grrr!)
Has anyone come across a ‘fix’ posted by Microsoft for this issue that I’m just not finding? Or perhaps, someone here has experienced this limitation and came up with a fix that they are willing to share?
Thanks, Mary Jane (MJ)
