1. Do any work-arounds exist for building a ‘Theme’ in my stand-alone
Outlook; for example: creatively changing defaults, or making templates, or
making drafts???
2. Am I going to discover more incompatibility issues with my stand-alone
Outlook software?

The following explains my question. Sorry for the length, but Microsoft may
want to pass this on to their marketing people as well. My saga on this issue
has got to be similar for thousands of Stand Alone customers, and it may give
you a chuckle.

When I had my PC built, I ordered the installation of Microsoft Office as I
knew it contained the e-mail program I had used at work. Sometime later I was
surprised to discover the e-mail program in Microsoft Office installed in my
new PC, was not the same as in my work PC. It was missing numerous features
such as Calendar Scheduling, Tasks, etc.. I subsequently learned that Outlook
and Outlook Express are two different e-mail programs (I don't get out much.)
The marketing names are confusing as they do not convey the difference. I now
had the choice of purchasing a second version of Microsoft Office containing
Outlook and discarding my old software, or the cheaper stand-alone Outlook –
both quite expensive. Of course the less expensive stand-alone cost seemed to
be a no-brainer, which the Best Buy associate confirmed by stating Microsoft
Outlook includes everything.

Sometime later, I couldn’t understand why I was unable to execute a Theme as
I had been able to do very simply on my work PC. I spent hours; I searched
the Internet; I finally discovered the “Personal Stationery” menu stating:
“Themes are not installed”. Ah ha! This implied all I had to do was figure
out how to install Themes. This implication is reinforced in Outlook Help
with the following statement:

“To quickly change the appearance of these elements, you can change the
theme.”

More frustrating hours were spent until I discovered the existence of this
message board. To my complete surprise, I discovered your statement that the
Microsoft Outlook stand-alone version does not support Themes! Therefore, I
would have to purchase a third Microsoft e-mail program: a Microsoft Office
program that included Outlook!!! I damn near punched my fist through my
$%#@!*& monitor!!

In general, I have always found Microsoft’s Support literature (e.g.
Knowledge Base) permeated with confusing jargon geared to the software
developer community, as opposed to descriptive understandable good ol’ plain
English for the layman. I find much clearer explanations to my Microsoft
software problems on the many excellent third-party message boards throughout
the World Wide Web, which furthermore, do not force me to enable my cookies.

As a first time user, this message board does look to be a great resource.
Kudos to you Microsoft people here.