Use of browser mailto: disables Word as email editor

[Lordspain]

I'm using OL 2003/Office 2003 SP2 and use Word as my email editor (XP Pro SP2). I do this becasue I've made several macros with icons I use frequently within Word and Outlook. Recently when I click on an email link in a browser I have a problem: Although Outlook opens and intetends to present me with a new message with the email address filled in, I receive the following error message: "Microsoft Word is set to be your e-mail editor. However, Word is unavailable, not installed, or is not the same version as Outlook. The

Outlook e-mail editor will be used instead. An OLE registration error has occurred. The program is not correctly installed. Run Setup again for the program." After clicking OK for this message, the regular Outlook mail editor opens - not Word. In addition, "Use Word 2003 to edit email messages" Under Tools\Options\MailFormat becomes deselected.

Word works just fine as my editor when I simply hit "New Message" from within Outlook - this occurs only when using the URL Mailto: Protocol in IE6.

I've tried System Restore & completely reinstalled Office 2003 w/updates & reinstalled IE6 but the problem continues. I'm having quite a bit of difficulty finding any mention of this particular problem. Any help would be appreciated.

[Lordspain]

Since I figured out the answer to this, I thought I'd include it for anyone who might be interested. This behavior was caused due to the fact that the Ole32.dll file that is on the computer was not correctly registered.

It was fixed simply by Start/Run regsvr32 ole32.dll Enter whereupon the message "DllRegisterServer in OLE32.DLL succeeded." was received.