Crystal2003,
When you tell Hal to open something he interprets the program name very literally from *his* perspective. For instance, if you say, "Hal open Word", he might open Wordpad instead of Word for Windows. The reason for this is apparent when you use Notepad to open the shortcut.dat file (located in Hal's home directory). This file contains the program names followed by their execution path.
When you ask Hal to open a program he will search down the list of programs in the shortcut.dat file until the first match he sees. In the case of Wordpad, he saw the word "Word" in "Wordpad". Word for Windows was listed as "Microsoft Word" on the line just following the Wordpad entry. But if I typed, "Hal open Microsoft Word", he would open Word for Windows correctly since the phrase "Microsoft Word" doesn't match "Wordpad".
In your case the Outlook entry in the shortcut.dat file probably says "Outlook Express", but Hal of course just looks for the first occurence of the word "Outlook". Use Notepad to open the shortcut.dat file and see how Outlook 2003 is listed. You should be able to type that name exactly and have Hal open it for you. A better solution would to be cut the Outlook 2003 entry (2 lines) and paste it at the top of the shortcut.datfile. Then when you say, "Hal open Outlook", the first occurence he sees will be the correct one.
Forgive me for being a bit wordy. I hope this helps.
= vonsmith =
