If you are using Outlook 2007, do you need Word 2007 as well?

For example in Outlook 2003, Word (Office Word, to be precise) is the default e-mail editor. If you are like me, you most often send your e-mails in plain text (ASCII), and don't bother with fancy formatting or image attachments. Thus, you could simply disable Word integration (and speed up your Outlook) and happily type in your messages with Outlook 2003's default editor.

Now, since Outlook 2007 is here, it turns out that you cannot simply disable Word, because Outlook now relies on Word for e-mail editing, even if it is plain text only.

Now, this obviously raises the question "what happens if I don't install Word 2007 but only Outlook 2007". Good question. It turns out that whenever you install Outlook 2007, you will also install certain parts of Word, even though you wouldn't install the complete product. However, if you install Word as well as Outlook, you will get additional features.

There's a Microsoft white paper detailing this. You can download the .DOCX version directly here.