Installing Office 2003 sp2 disables Outlook signature

[Guest]

After installing Office 2003 sp2 my Outlook signature became disabled. Going
into Outlook > Tools > Options > Mail format > all the signature section was
greyed out.
I was able to insert my signature from within a new email however (Insert >
Signature). After spending an hour on the phone with a very helpful support
analyst from Microsoft the only way we could fix the problem was to
re-install Outlook. The problem seemed to be PC based as a colleague logged
into the same PC and had the same problem. When I logged into another PC the
problem didn't occur.
When opening Outlook in safe mode the signature section once again became
enabled. We disabled all the Outlook add-ins but the problem still occured.
I work in a medium-sized firm and we have Office 2003 Standard (volume
licence) installed.
After re-installing Outlook I again tried to install sp2 and the same
problem occurred. Any ideas?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

The only situation in which I've seen the signature options become unavailable is when a group policy setting has been applied by the network administrator. Have you looked in the registry in HKCU/Software/Policies to see if there are any policies set related to Office?

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Guest]

I think you were right. A colleague suggested using the command line
gpupdate /force which apparently does something to group policies - you
probably know better than me what it does! but anyway this has corrected the
problem. Thanks.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

FWIW, gpupdate refreshes the group policy settings.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers