I'd hardly call using CSS for html layout "reinventing the wheel" – it feels more like using a standard bicycle instead of sticking with a penny-farthing or a Pedestrian Curricle. (by extension, using Word to write html is trying to do the Tour de France on a pogo-stick: not the job the tool was designed for)

Result-driven, I managed to produce what was required by copy/pasting a three-column table from Word into Outlook and not going anywhere near .html – shouldn't have been distracted by the fact that colleague's reported procedure started from a web editor.