Our own OutlookPower Update is affected too. Since the problems are pretty typical, I'll use a recent issue to illustrate some of the problems. Figure A shows a bit of the newsletter, as it appears in Outlook 2003.

FIGURE A

Outlook 2003 displaying a bit of the OutlookPower Update. Click picture for a larger image.

Figure B shows that same bit of the same email as rendered by Outlook 2007.

FIGURE B

Outlook 2007 displaying the same bit of the same OutlookPower Update. Click picture for a larger image.

Notice all the differences between the two figures. The font styles and colors are different. The background colors are mostly missing. The positioning of the text in the header is off. In short, the newsletter doesn't appear nearly as nice in Outlook 2007. It's readable, but clearly not right.

Note: David, the big guy here at OutlookPower and all the magazines in the ZATZ network, is fully aware of this problem and the team is working on ways to change the look and feel of the newsletter so it renders properly in Outlook 2007. We'll post progress reports as we learn more about how to deal with this.

There's nothing you as a user can do to address this problem, no Outlook 2003 compatibility mode or anything like that. We'll all have to wait and see how the folks who use HTML in their messages and newsletters respond to the issue.

When Word 2007 is not really Word 2007
Remember when I said that Outlook 2007 uses Word 2007 to render HTML messages? Actually, Outlook 2007 uses Word 2007 for all its editing and rendering. If you currently use Outlook 2003 without the rest of Microsoft Office, you are probably freaked out at the idea of having to buy a copy of Word 2007 when you upgrade to Outlook 2007.

Well don't sweat it.

While Microsoft has said that Outlook 2007 uses Word 2007 to render HTML, the situation is really more complicated than that. That's because Outlook 2007 doesn't require Word 2007 to be installed at all.

Confused yet?

Here's the secret: if Word 2007 isn't installed on your computer, Outlook 2007 uses its own subset of the Word 2007 editing capabilities. So you can use Outlook 2007 separately from Word 2007. If you just do simple stuff, you'll never notice the difference. However...

...notice I said Outlook 2007 uses its own subset of Word 2007. When you use Outlook 2007 without a copy of Word 2007 installed, you lose some stuff. Among other things, you lose:

• Some of the auto-formatting
• The ability to create tables in messages
• The Grammar checker
• WordArt

Those are some of the things you can see. Some changes are under the hood and out of sight. For example, support for some parts of the Word object model is missing. What that means to us non-programmers is that if your company creates sophisticated applications that work on the contents of messages, they may behave differently for users with and without the full version of Word 2007 installed.

Anyhow, you get the idea. While Outlook 2007 will work without Word 2007 installed, it won't work exactly the same. Mostly the same, but not 100%. You can get more information on the differences, including references to more detailed information, from the same Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 email editor white paper we talked about earlier.