I have office 2003. At random times, I'll check my task manager and find WINWORD.EXE running.

I didn't start up word, and I don't see it in my startup under msconfig. I was wondering if anyone else had similiar, or knew a solution.

Have you started outlook?

As BPP said, it loads with Outlook and sometimes tends not to close itself even if you close Outlook down. Its an annoying problem, but not a serious one.

It's running on mine right now, of course I also have outlook 2003 running all the time. And Outlook uses WORD, so it will be open.

Wow. That makes sense. You guys nailed it, thanks

I don't know...

I really consider this to be a bug. I use Word as my mail editor, but I don't see why Word needs to stay open AFTER I have edited/sent a mail, and why it has to eat 15-25MB of my memory.

Although I don't think MS sees this behaviour as a problem, I don't even think it's mentioned in their Knowledge Base.

I don't recall where, but there is an option to not use Word in Outlook's configuration options.

Might be worth looking for.

Yes Phonics, if you go to Tools -> Options -> Mail Format (third tab) -> You can mark/unmark "use Word as e-mail editor"

That does the trick, but (off course) you lose the functionalities of Word when your composing an e-mail.