Using Word as an E-mail Editor

By, default Outlook 2003 uses Word as the default editor for composing new messages and reading messages received in Rich Text Format. When this option was introduced in Outlook 97, it was known as WordMail, and Office veterans remember its unfortunate ten­dency to slow down your system and cause data-destroying crashes. In Outlook 2000, the integration between Word and Outlook was much improved, but still far from perfect. In Outlook 2003, Microsoft has ironed out enough of the kinks in integration between Outlook and Word for most people to seriously consider using Word in place of Outlook's built-in message editor.

If you configure Outlook to use Word as its default editor, you have to deal with the follow­ing tradeoffs:

• On the plus side, you get to use MS Word's much more sophisticated editing tools to com­pose messages. That means you could take benefit of the AutoCorrect and AutoText in messages, and you could use templates and macros in order  to automate message creation. If your default format is HTML, you'll appreciate Word's editing tools, especially because you can use Word tables and text boxes to organize an HTML message. You can use themes to add personality to your messages. And Word's unlimited undo feature is a godsend when composing messages.
• On the downside, you have to load Word to compose a new message. In theory, that slows down performance initially and uses more memory than Outlook alone. And despite dramatic improvements in this version, you can expect the Word-Outlook com­bination to be less stable than either program would be on its own. In practice, on a modern PC with at least 256MB of RAM, you're unlikely to notice any performance degradation associated with loading and unloading Word with Outlook.

To enable or disable the use of Word as the default editor for all new messages, replies, and forwards, choose Tools, Options, click the Mail Format tab, and select the Use Microsoft Office Word 2003 to Edit E-Mail Messages check box.

Questionnaire:

• Explain using Word as an E-mail Editor.