Outlook 2007 somewhat crippled without Word 2007

One of my clients, whose business is too small to have a server of its own, just signed up for a hosted Exchange service. That means they can use features of Exchange without buying their own Exchange server. It also means they are entitled to a license for Outlook 2007 for each of their users.

It’s possible to install Outlook 2007 on your computer while keeping the rest of your Office suite at an older version, but as we’ve just learned, there are some drawbacks to this arrangement. The most noticeable problem is that the spellcheck functionality is significantly reduced. The autocorrect (fix it while you type) feature is disabled, as is the immediate red underlining of unrecognized words. The only way to get full spellcheck functionality is to install Word 2007 as well.

This limitation is described in a Microsoft whitepaper. This whitepaper provides several useful pictures and explanations of what users can expect to see in Outlook 2007.