Outlook 2003 A Dialog Box Is Open

[Chris LeFebvre]

A friend of mine called because all of a sudden her Outlook 2003 started
popping up a message "A dialog box is open". Actually this is the second
time this has happened. As usual I Googled on this problem and most
people seem to think that the dialog that's hidden is the one that pops
up when you first install office and open an application that asks you
for your name and initials. The first time around I tried opening Word /
Access and PowerPoint and that dialog never opened, most likely because
it had already been filled in after the initial installation. I did a
complete uninstall / reinstall and started word and filled the dialog
out and that was three months ago and there's been no problem up until now.

So now this is happening again and I've checked in word tools / options
/ user information tab and the information is filled out. I've been
unable to find any other information on this other than in Outlook 2007
a patch KB946983 was known to cause this and uninstalling it fixed the
problem. I checked both add / remove programs and searched the windows
directory and this patch (if it's even relevant for Outlook 2003) is not
installed.

As I'd rather not spend two hours uninstalling / reinstalling and the
putting on all services packs and patches does anyone have an idea about
how to remedy this?

Thanks,

- Chris

 

[Roady [MVP]]

When exactly does he gets this message?
Does it happen all the time?
Does it still happen in Outlook Safe Mode?
Start-> Run; outlook.exe /safe
(note the space in the command)

 

[Russ Valentine]

Usually it's Auto archive. Change the settings.

 

[Chris LeFebvre]

Russ,

I went and checked the computer and auto archive was already set to off.

- Chris

 

[Chris LeFebvre]

Roady,

She was out of the office for half the week so I had some difficulty
getting some of the details. But as far as I can tell the message just
pops up during normal usage, either while Outlook is just sitting idle
or when she's writing or replying to an email.

I will stop by and create a separate icon to start outlook in safe mode
and have her run that for a couple days and see if it still happens.

Thanks,

- Chris

 

[Chris LeFebvre]

Hi Roady,

I got some more details from her and it seems like her original
description of the problem was a little inaccurate. This is what I got
out of her:

The message "A Dialog box is open" only happens when she first starts
Outlook 2003.

The problem does not happen every time she opens Outlook, just sometimes.

Because this seems to be an intermittent problem it's hard to tell if
running in safe mode fixes the problem or not. I'll do some further
testing and get back to you on that.

In the meantime, any other idea's about what could be causing this?

Thanks,

- Chris