Windows Fix of The Day: Outlook Distress!

I have learned something very valuable of the last several weeks.  I recently bumped into a situation where I needed to support a couple of people's Outlook 2007 email clients.  I have seen a couple pretty crazy problems as of late.  And I will cover a little guidance for those this afternoon. 

The first Outlook oddity: Outlook was extremely slow to open, then the program would stop responding while it was partially open.  This would result in the user seeing the GUI (graphical user interface) for Outlook, but the areas where emails and the email previews were would be blank white boxes.  After attempting to reinstall the program, the problem never changed.  I then found out that by going to 'Start->Run->'and typing 'outlook.exe /safe' the program will launch Outlook's Safe Mode.  There are several 'Safe' switches that you can use when troubleshooting.

• '/safe'     Simply starts Outlook without any extensions, the reading pane, or toolbar customization.
• '/safe:1'  Starts Outlook with the Reading pane turned off (Outlook 2003/2007).
• '/safe:2'  Allows you to start Outlook without checking for mail after startup.
• '/safe:3'  Disables all extensions.
• '/safe:4'   Disables customized toolbars (Outcmd.dat and *.fav files)

By using process of elimination I was able to step through these switches (finally stopping on '/safe:3') I was able to find that an extension was halting Outlook from opening properly.  Then by using Outlook's Extension Manager, I was able to narrow down which extension was the problem and disable it.


The second Outlook oddity: on another computer (running Windows Vista), whenever the user would try to run Outlook an error message would pop up reading 'Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window.'  This was a new one on me.  After speaking with the user they mentioned it worked fine last night, then after downloading an Update from Windows Update today (not sure exactly which update it was) Outlook quite working properly.  She tried a fix she found on a Microsoft Support forum which stepped her through a registry edit (which she tried without success).


I did a little research and found several posts about it on several different forums.  The general consensus was that most people had success with a rather simple fix.  I tried it, and it worked for me.  So I thought I would pass it on.

• Click 'Start'
• Click 'Run' (or use the search box in Vista).
• Type: Outlook.exe /resetnavpane    *Note: Make sure there is a space after Outlook.exe
• Hit 'Enter' or click 'OK'.  Now try to open Outlook again.

Hopefully, these tips will save someone some trouble and research.  If you have any other fixes, drop a comment below!