Outlook freezing?

Have you ever had outlook 2000/2003 freeze on you when you try to reply to a message? Well I seem to see this issue quite often. Very quick solution is to not use word as your message composer. You will loose some features such as auto spell checker but at least you will be able to reply.
Unfortunatelly I did not get a chance to dwell into why this happenes which I will do one of these days. My educated guess is that interface between two applications gets corrupt. Reinstalling office might be a permanent solution.
In order to uncheck microsft word as editor, go to tools-->options-->mail format. You will find a check box under that option.