If I try to Reply or Forward and e-mail while Word is set as my editor, the
attempt results in a message about Word being unavailable or the wrong
version. If I create a new e-mail with Word and 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.

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 running the "Detect and Repair" facility
from both the Outlook and Word menus. I tried running the Repair
installation from "Add and Remove Programs". 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 five times. The
second time I uninstalled Office Meeting and never reinstalled it. The last
four 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 two times I uninstalled, I ran the Windows Installer CleanUp
Utility, but could not find any Office stuff to clean up.

The last time I uninstalled, I also renamed the "C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office" to something else and deleted the registry keys and subkeys for
"HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office" and "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office" as
well.

I have a nearly identical setup running on my laptop without any problems.
I created a program to compare registry dumps for the above Office registry
keys and could not find any differences that looked remotely like it might
have something to do with the problem.

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 30 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