Like you, I had trouble seaching for this. Out of curiousity, can you point
me to the other mentions of this behaviour? I'd really like to see what
they said. It might give me a spark for something to search for.

Managed to scrape up a couple:
http://groups.google.com/group/micro...0ad26a7db6c77a
http://groups.google.com/group/micro...d7ff9f611b3a64
http://help.lockergnome.com/office/O...ict594140.html

Found one from a woman who assumes she's just hitting bad keys (but
I'll bet it's actually this whole deal -- I kept assuming the same
thing when it first happened):
http://groups.google.com/group/micro...aec15e0333eb31

So, just to make sure, it only seems to happen on the first control-v in the
message. IOW, whatever is causing this, while random, isn't random beyond
the unsent message window.

Yes, that's right: an unsent e-mail with an address in the address
field. And good point: As far as I can recall, it is indeed always the
first instance of CTRL-V on that unsent body. (Though not necessarily
the first CTRL-V during that session of Outlook.)

You say the machine is 'clean'. So, that tells me that there is *no*
software installed on the system besides Office?

Sorry, that was just me being a layman using a term that probably has
a technical meaning. What I meant is that the work PC is scrupulously
maintained by high-level corporate admins, and so isn't filled with
random gunk as a home PC might be.

Because of those same corporate admins, I won't be able to post
further to this thread until tonight. ;-)