When you first open Word, dirty the blank page and don't delete it. This
will keep Word open.

When you eventually upgrade to Off2003, once Word has been opened by
Outlook, although you send the message and Word 'appears' to close, it
actually still runs in background: this is to speed up the opening of Word
as Email Editor - especially useful on slower systems.

--
Terry Farrell - Word MVP
http://word.mvps.org/

"Jim" wrote in message
news :I keep Word 2000 open on my desktop at all times, so I can toggle to it
when
: I need to open a file, or do any word processing.
:
: I have Outlook 2000, and have it set to use Word as my email editor.
:
: The scenario of my problem is this:
: 1) No document open in Word, but program is open and running.
: 2) In Outlook, I elect to creat a new mail message.
: 3) New mail message is opened in Word, and I create my email messge.
: 4) When I finish my message and click on SEND, not only does the message
: send, and the message closes in Word, Word also closes. Now when I want to
: use Word for another use (word processing, etc.) I have to go to the Start
: menu and restart the program again.
:
: How can I get Word to remain open once I send my email?
:
: (Obviously, in the above scenario, if I had an existing document already
: open in Word, then the application remains open to support the document
when
: it closes the email file.)
:
: --
: Jim