Just to get this straight - you have Word 2000 AND 2003 on the machine in question?

If so, the problem is probably to do with product registration! Although you can run two versions (or more) of Word on one machine, Microsoft seem to have left out the compatibility to do so easily!

A work round is the following (I did this with 2003 and 2007 and the now play nicely together!)

The following will re-register 2003 as the default Word, and stop it from trying to re-register when it loads if 2000 was opened in between.

Start > Run > ["C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\Word.exe" /regserver] - excluding the [brackets] > Enter

If you have installed to a different location you will need to alter the path details.

then

Start > Run > [reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options /v NoReReg /t REG_DWORD /d 1] - excluding the [brackets] > Enter

Now open one version of Word, close it and then open the other version and close it - now try Outlook.


Let me know if it works for this particular situation!