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“Phantom” Word window in Outlook 2003

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I have one user recently upgraded to Outlook 2003 (from XP) who is getting a blank word window (gray) every time he opens Outlook. Sometimes it can be closed, sometimes not.
I have seen this before but do not know what I can do to stop it.

BTW, the user is the President of our company so I am trying to fix this asap… 🙂

Topic

HELP

In reply to “Phantom” Word window in Outlook 2003

Did you ever find a solutions to your Phantom Word 2003 problem? I’m having the same problem and i’ve been scratching my head for a solution. Any advice would be great!

Solution

In reply to “Phantom” Word window in Outlook 2003

In Outlook select Tools/Options then click on the Mail Format tag. Uncheck use MS Office Word… in two places. Close Outlook and re-open it. Check the two boxes to enable using MS Office Word again and the blank word window is gone (at least it was for me). I don’t know why it happened or why this fixed it. Hope this helps someone else.

Corrupt Office upgradation

In reply to “Phantom” Word window in Outlook 2003

As a workaround to your problem, you can try disabling the MS Word as an editor for your email client(Outlook in this case). For this goto Tools->Options->Mail Format, and uncheck the check box for “Use Microsoft Office Word 2003 to edit e-mail messages”.
Your problem will now be gone. If you still want to use Word as an editor, then try again checking it, I hope this time it will work without any extra word window.
The reason I think for such cases is that whenever you try to upgrade from XP to 2003, your office settings are not transfered correctly to the higher version and you may receive such errors in some other scenarios as well. It’s better to check for any upgrade problems simply by clicking the “Detect and Repair Microsoft Office” option in the Help Menu of Microsoft Word/Outlook if you face such problems.
I am having Office XP yet and I face lot of problems pertaining to “Script Errors” in Outlook. I then use this “Detect and Repair” option and it works for me.

This Fixed my Issue

In reply to “Phantom” Word window in Outlook 2003

I ran into this same issue with 3 PC in our company. The only thing they had in common was dual monitor with Matrox GFX card.

This problem drove me nuts for weeks. While I was building a new system and installing the video card and software for a New employee I found in the desktop management utilities for the dual monitor a check box ” Automatically save/restore windows positions “.

Now I’m not sure what this option is really for but unchecking this option solved my problem.

If you have any desktop management software installed, take a good look at all the options you have checked.

Good Luck.

Reply To: “Phantom” Word window in Outlook 2003

In reply to This Fixed my Issue

I had the problem of a phantom grey Word panel associated with Outlook 2003. I am using a Matrox dual monitor card but with only one monitor. Unchecking the “Automatically save/restore windows positions cured the phantom grey Word problem.

Thanks.

“Phantom” search / find window in Outlook 2003

In reply to “Phantom” Word window in Outlook 2003

I have one user recently upgraded to Outlook 2003 (from XP) who is getting a blank search find window (gray) every time I close Outlook.
I have seen this before but do not know what I can do to stop it.

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