Problem with Outlook 2003 and using Word as editor

[Mario]

Greatings,

I have a problem with Office 2003 Professional which is driving me
nuts. When I go to outlook, click reply on any email, I get the
following error:

Microsoft Word is set to be your e-mail editor. However, Word is
unavailable, not installed, or is not the same version as Outlook.
The Outlook e-mail editor will be used instead. An OLE registration
error occurred. The program is not correctly installed. Run Setup
again for the program.

Ok, here is all I have done to sort out this stupid problem:

In outlook, I clicked help/detect and repair, left "Restore my
shortcuts while repairing" checked and "Discard my customized settings
and restore default settings" unchecked. Nada
I did the step above with both checked. Nada
control panel, add/remove programs, clicked change on office
professional edition, selected the "re-install or repair option",
selected the "detect and repair errors in my office installation"
option. Nada
I was going nuts, so I decided to uninstall Office 2003. Ouch. and
then reinstall it. applied all the updates, security etc. Ouch and
nada.
Followed the instructions in Microsoft KB
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;290301 . Re-
installed office 2003. Nada
ran offcln.exe in folder Files/Pfiles/Msoffice/Office11 folder on
installation media
I ran sysinternals processmonitor (filemon and regmon combined) and
looked at the logfiles on a machine where clicking reply will start
word and on the machine where I get the error. I compared the two and
for all I can see, I cannot make heads or tail from the difference.

What do you guys suggest?

Thanks.

 

[Mario]

I am appalled. I read in another posting that re-registering
old32.dll (regsvr32 %windir%\system32\ole32.dll) could fix it and it
did. Why did no microsoft KB point to that. And a search in google
did not return the article. I guess I learned to do a search in
google news also.