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Outlook appears to stop responding when you use Word to create a new e-mail message

Article ID: 278214 - View products that this article applies to.

This article was previously published under Q278214

SYMPTOMS

When you attempt to create a new message in Microsoft Outlook by using Microsoft Word as your e-mail editor, Outlook may seem to stop responding (hang).

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This problem can occur if Outlook has to wait while Word is busy. If the wait is long, Outlook appears not to be responding.

Note Beginning with Microsoft Office 2003, Word is set by default as the e-mail editor. Before Office 2003, the Outlook Email Editor was set as the default.

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To work around this problem, close Word and then try to create a new message in Word.

Note Because there are several versions of Microsoft Windows, the following steps may be different on your computer. If they are, see your product documentation to complete these steps.

Before following these steps, save the contents of any open Microsoft Word documents.

Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE on your keyboard.
Click Task Manager.
Click the Processes tab.
Click WINWORD.EXE, and then click End Process. A Task Manager Warning dialog box will appear.
Click Yes to confirm that you want to end the WINWORD.EXE process.