Do you have Outlook configured to use Word as its editor?

>Hi,
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>I have noticed that the CPU usage of my PC (Windows 7 Pro with 16 GB ram) goes up whenever I start replying to an email. And the longer I reply (or stay in the Reply mode) the higher the CPU until the entire Outlook stops responding. And then I have to close Outlook. As soon as I close it, the CPU goes down.
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>What could be causing CPU to go up when replying?
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>UPDATE. Another thing I noticed in Task Manager. When I open Outlook, it's memory is no more than 80K. As soon as I click on Reply (to any message), the CPU jumps up from 0 to 20 or 25 right away. The Memory starts growing very fast. I had to cancel Reply when the memory was 196K. So far, Googling for this specific issue didn't produce a solution.