Can Not Reply to Emails in Outlook

Subscriber John from Australia wrote about some problems he was having with Word 2003 and Outlook (presumably Outlook 2003). John wrote:

Cannot reply to emails in Outlook & Trouble with AutoText

1. I cannot type a reply to an email in the usual manner. When I try to type a reply, my typing does not appear on the screen.

I have to open word, type my reply to the email and then try to send it, but more often I just cannot send it even then. It guess that I must have pressed something or other to prohibit the sending of replies?

2 I use Auto Text quite frequently; however, it also seems to have gone bonkers.

I get hold of a previously printed letterhead, select it all and then go to Auto Text where it is virtually saved for the next usage, however, more often than not when I go to Auto Text again to use it; I find that the printed letterhead does not show! Sometimes part of the letterhead shows, but whatever — I cannot use it in the letter or email I am constructing!

Does this sound like a simple thing to fix?

When I go to Auto Text, often only my name appears; the rest is just yellow lines so that means I have to save it again.

Fortunately I saved the letterheads previously just in case I needed them. Lucky me!

I use XP Professional, Word 2003 and Microsoft Outlook

Can you help me, please?
I wrote back to suggest a simple, yet effective, fix to a lot of Word strangeness problems.
1) Close Word 2003.
2) Close Outlook
3) Locate the normal.dot file -- with Word 2003 under Windows XP, this is probably
C:\Documents and Settings\[YourUserID]\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\Normal.dot
4) Delete the Normal.dot file
5) start Word 2003. It will rebuild the Normal.dot file.

The Normal.dot file is Word's default template file that is used when you create a new document.

Word stores a lot of its configuration information in the Normal.dot file, such as default font size, default font color (what would happen if our default font color was white and the background color was white?).

By deleting and then letting Word rebuild the Normal.dot file, you're effectively doing a reset of the file. It doesn't change all of Word's other configuration stuff that's set via Tools/Options, but it can solve a lot of problems.

By the way, if the Normal.dot file ever gets corrupted, Word crashes when it tries to open. The fix is to delete the Normal.dot file and let Word create it again.