Jeffrey Kent, a loyal GBM reader, was having a heck of a time figuring out why inking was disabled within Office 2007 on his Fujitsu P1620. James Kendrick and I even spent some time helping him through the debugging process. Through many emails back and forth, support calls to Microsoft, and to Fujitsu, it turns out that his custom installation of Office 2007 was the culprit.

It turns out that a customized install of Office may inadvertently remove the inking components necessary for inking within Office apps. Lesson learned: Do a Full / Non Customized Install. Head over to Mobile Barbarian for all the details.

This is definitely something the Microsoft Office team needs to look at. It is not a good thing if someone can inadvertently break inking by choosing not to install features that don't appear at all related to inking.

While you are on Jeffrey's site, be sure to checkout his vLite tutorial on streamlining a Vista installation.