Can't use Word to Reply or Forward

[James H. Hansen]

I can use Word to create New e-mails, but Reply and Forward result in a
message about Word being unavailable or the wrong version. It was working
fine Tuesday afternoon, but was broken the next time I used it on Friday
morning. I needed to get some more disk space back, so between those times
I had uninstalled a few programs such as several old versions of Sun's Java,
a couple audio editors I never used and a few other similarly unrelated
software. I also retrieved about 1.5 GB by deleting files that were older
than one month in various TEMP folders and deleting some Windows Update
uninstall folders older than 2 months.

Word is version 11.8106.8107 and Outlook is 11.8010.8107 under Office 2003
Professional.

I have tried all the suggestions I could Google. I tried all the applicable
suggestions in KB 906307. I tried re-registering ole32.dll. In desperation
I even tried reregistering every DLL in SYSTEM32 as one poster suggested.

I tried creating a new profile and using that, even removing my original
profile. (I'm using Exchange Server, so it wasn't hard.)

I have uninstalled and reinstalled Office Professional four times. The
second time I uninstalled Office Meeting and never reinstalled it. The last
three times I uninstalled and reinstalled Visio and FrontPage as well as
Office Professional. I checked the status of the problem after initial
installation, after applying Office SP2 and after installing each of two
batches of updates from Microsoft Update. The problem was always there.

The last time I uninstalled, I ran the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility,
but could not find any Office stuff to clean up.

I have a nearly identical setup running on my laptop without any problems.

Short of formatting the HD and reinstalling Windows XP, which would take
about two weeks to get back up with all my applications, what else can be
done? I have spent about 20 hours on this so far and am beginning to get a
little testy!

I am a veteran software developer (> 30 yrs.) and will boldly go where I
haven't yet been if KNOWLEDGEABLE people can make intelligent suggestions,
but I have to earn a living and can't make a second career of this. I like
using Word as my editor, but...

Please reply to the group as noydb.com will not get to me.

....Jim Hansen
Canyon Country Consulting

 

[Vijay]

Try detect and repair, uninstall and reinstall outlook even if that does'nt
help u, then back up the registry and rename the outlook keys in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office and in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office rename the outlook keys to
outlookold in 11.0 9.0 8.0 and there's 1 called outlook in the office.

 

[James H. Hansen]

Thank you for your suggestion.

I neglected to mention that several times before reinstalling I had tried
the "Detect and Repair" from both the Outlook and Word menus. I also twice
tried the Repair option from "Add and Remove Programs" in the control panel.

After backing up the parent registry keys, I also deleted the registry keys
referencing 9.0 and 8.0 versions in both HKLM and HKCU. I examined the
other Office keys for 11.0 and not stored under any version number,
comparing them with my working laptop, and did not find any differences in
keys or values that looked like they could have anything at all to do with
replying or forwarding messages or referencing Word from Outlook.

If I don't get any other suggestions that help, I may try deleting all the
registry keys related to office and reinstalling yet again, but I am
reluctant to spend another 3 hours or reinstalling all Office applications
plus the time necessary to reconfigure all my applications' preferences
without some specific expectation of improvement.

....Jim

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

In the most refractory of cases, you can try this at your own risk:
Get the Windows Installer Cleanup utility from Microsoft.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;290301

Then uninstall Word and run the installer cleanup utility to remove anything
that has Word in it and\or remove information from any previous version of
Microsoft Office. Reboot. Then re-install Word. Reboot. Then run Office
Detect and Repair. Reboot.

To use the Windows installer cleanup utility to remove Word:
1. Click Start, point to All Programs, and then click Windows Install Clean
Up.
2. In the list of installed programs, click Word or the earlier Office
installation, and then click Remove.
3. When the removal process is completed, click OK, and then click Exit.

 

[James H. Hansen]

Thanks for the suggestion, Russ. But as I said in my original post, I've
tried this and the uninstaller could not find any reference to Word,
Outlook, Office or any other Office components after I completed the
uninstall.

....Jim

In the most refractory of cases, you can try this at your own risk:
Get the Windows Installer Cleanup utility from Microsoft.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;290301

Then uninstall Word and run the installer cleanup utility to remove
anything that has Word in it and\or remove information from any previous
version of Microsoft Office. Reboot. Then re-install Word. Reboot.
Then run Office Detect and Repair. Reboot.

To use the Windows installer cleanup utility to remove Word:
1. Click Start, point to All Programs, and then click Windows Install
Clean Up.
2. In the list of installed programs, click Word or the earlier Office
installation, and then click Remove.
3. When the removal process is completed, click OK, and then click Exit.



--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

Thank you for your suggestion.

I neglected to mention that several times before reinstalling I had
tried the "Detect and Repair" from both the Outlook and Word menus. I
also twice tried the Repair option from "Add and Remove Programs" in the
control panel.

After backing up the parent registry keys, I also deleted the registry
keys referencing 9.0 and 8.0 versions in both HKLM and HKCU. I examined
the other Office keys for 11.0 and not stored under any version number,
comparing them with my working laptop, and did not find any differences
in keys or values that looked like they could have anything at all to do
with replying or forwarding messages or referencing Word from Outlook.

If I don't get any other suggestions that help, I may try deleting all
the registry keys related to office and reinstalling yet again, but I am
reluctant to spend another 3 hours or reinstalling all Office
applications plus the time necessary to reconfigure all my applications'
preferences without some specific expectation of improvement.

...Jim

 

[James H. Hansen]

Actually, it doesn't work 100% when sending new e-mails. If I type in an
explicit e-mail address in the TO or CC fields, it works fine and sends the
e-mail to the entered addresses. But if I use the TO... button to pop up
the list of contacts, then select a contact and click OK, Word gives me an
error "No such interface exists" and doesn't return the addresses.

....Jim

 

[James H. Hansen]

OK. I uninstalled, deleted the Office keys in both HKCU and HKLM, renamed
the "program files/microsoft/office" folder, rebooted, ran the Windows
Installer CleanUp Utility (again with nothing found to clean up), then
reinstalled Office.

NO CHANGE! Just three and a half more wasted hours.

Before doing this, I wrote some software to compare the Office keys (HKCU
and HKLM) between my broken desktop system ad my working laptop system.
There were no key differences that appeared related to the problem. Two
more wasted hours.

I'm running out of options and time. This is getting very frustrating.

....Jim