Category Archives: Outlook

Outlook Failure After Windows 7 Update

When logging on to one of my systems this morning, I discovered that Windows 7 had installed updates and rebooted the system.  By itself, that wasn’t such a big deal.  But Outlook was sitting on the screen showing me the “Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook.  Cannot open the Outlook window.”

Outlook Loading Problem
Outlook Loading Problem

This error message is fairly cryptic.  Clicking “OK” and trying to relaunch Outlook does not solve the problem.

Apparently the issue is well known enough within Microsoft that Outlook does come with a command line switch that will fix the problem and allow Outlook to open.

Start->run..then type the following -> "Outlook.exe /resetnavpane"

This problem could have been avoided by shutting down applications for the night rather than leaving them running.  However, this problem could be avoided by a little bit better design of Outlook.  Even adding some guidance to the error message would be helpful.

Wierd Outlook Email Effect

I was trying to send an email to a new contact today and got the strange message shown below from Microsoft Outlook 2007 as soon as I clicked “Send.”

Rejected Email
Rejected Email
 
Searching online for “None of your e-mail accounts could send to this recipient” wasn’t really helpful.  Many of the responses suggested that my email accounts weren’t configured correctly.  Others suggested that the problem was with my ISP.
 
One suggested that the email type of the recipient was “wrong.”  I wasn’t really certain how that could be as the email address had been copied exactly from the forwarded email.
 
With some experimenting, I was able to reproduce the steps that caused the problem.
 
Step 1 – Copy the address as seen in the forwarded email and paste it into a new email.
Pasted Address
Pasted Address

Step 2 – Click the “Check Names” button to have Outlook convert it to an email address.

Check Names
Check Names

 Outlook should have transformed the email address into something like what’s shown next.

After Name is Checked
After Name is "Checked"

Step 3 – Complete the email and click “Send” to send the message.  You should immediately receive the message shown at the beginning of this posting.

What Outlook has done is “helpfully” set the email address type.  Where’s that?  Right click on the address and select “Outlook Properties” to display the properties for the email address.

Email Address Properties (Wrong)
Email Address Properties (Wrong)

The “problem” field is “E-mail type.”  Outlook has set it to the custom type of “MAILTO” which it pulled from the address when it was pasted into the new email.

Click the “Internet type” button to change it to “SMTP.”

Email Address Type (Correct)
Email Address Type (Correct)

Once that’s done, the email will send normally to the intended recipient.