Outlook Won't Stay Open

[Jan Groshan]

HELP! Suddenly, out of nowhere, my Outlook (2007) will NOT stay open. It
loads, and then I get the "encountered an error and must close" message. I
can't even back up my .pst file because the program won't stay loaded. Any
clues.
(Windows XP SP3)

 

[Alias]

HELP! Suddenly, out of nowhere, my Outlook (2007) will NOT stay open. It
loads, and then I get the "encountered an error and must close" message. I
can't even back up my .pst file because the program won't stay loaded. Any
clues.
(Windows XP SP3)

How do you back up your .pst file? One should copy it while Outlook is
CLOSED. Have you run scanpst.exe?

Alias

 

[DL]

Why would you need for outlook to be open in order to backup your pst?
If you are thinking of export that is certainly not the way to backup a pst
The method of backing up / saving a data file has been posted here daily

Have you tried Office Diagnostics, from the Office cd, or even scanpst, the
repair tool on your pst?

 

[Jan Groshan]

I usually "export" my .pst file to my desktop, but I did in fact notice that
it was "last updated" today. What will scanpst.exe to? Will it find whatever
is keeping Outlook from staying open?

 

[Jan Groshan]

Guess I don't read this group often enough to see alternative ways of
backing up/saving the .pst file, although I did export it to my desktop a
couple of weeks ago and just today say that it was "last updated" this
morning. No, I haven't had a chance to run Office Diagnostics from the cd
yet. That's my plan for later this evening. What will scanpst.exe do? Will
it find whatever the problem is that's making Outlook shut down?

 

[Alias]

I usually "export" my .pst file to my desktop, but I did in fact notice that
it was "last updated" today. What will scanpst.exe to? Will it find whatever
is keeping Outlook from staying open?

It might. It repairs the .pst file if it has errors. If you've never run
it, most certainly it will find errors. Search for it and include hidden
files in your search and then you might want to put a shortcut on the
desktop for future use.

Instead of exporting, find your .pst file and merely copy it to external
media. When you want to restore, use File/Open instead of Import.

Alias

 

[DL]

scanpst.exe is the inbox repair tool provided by MS which will check your
pst (data File) for err's

A backup/export to your desktop is no backup at all, you backup to external
media or a seperate HD

 

[Jan Groshan]

I do that as well......I have an external hard drive, and also subscribe to
Carbonite, so whatever is on my desktop gets backed up several places.

 

[Jan Groshan]

Will do it all this evening. Thanks. Hope it works.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

I usually "export" my .pst file to my desktop, but I did in fact notice that
it was "last updated" today. What will scanpst.exe to? Will it find whatever
is keeping Outlook from staying open?

If you're using a PST to begin with, why export when you already have a PST?
Just make a copy of it while Outlook is closed. Exporting does not make a
one-for-one copy of an existing PST. Distributions Lists often fail to export
properly and you lose the connections between, say, contacts and the calendar.
Other metadata gets lost as well.

 

[Jan]

OK. Ran the scanpst.exe and it did find and repair some errors, but Outlook
still won't stay open. As soon as it loads, the "encountered an error and
must close" message appears. I guess my next step is to reinstall.....unless
someone has another suggestion.

 

[DL]

Open outlook using the safe switch
Run
Outlook.exe /safe (note space between exe /)
Does it start/run ok?

PS An uninstall/reinstall wont do anything that diagnostics doesnt do

 

[Jan]

Yes, that seemed to work. But what does it mean?

 

[DL]

It means broadly that one of your addins is causing OL to baulk
Review your addins, disable the none MS ones, then close & start outlook
normally, if its OK its a case of re-enabling add-ins one by one untill you
find the problem one.
Often any anti virus intergration is the first suspect, followed by sync
software

 

[Jan Groshan]

After running Outlook in safe mode, it opened fine the next time. I then
"copied" the .pst file and deleted the .pst file I had on my desktop. The
next time I opened Outlook it was looking for the .pst file that was on the
desktop and when it couldn't find it, it opened the other .pst file. (It
gave me an option to find the "real".pst file.) Now that I directed Outlook
to the "real" .pst file, it seems to be working fine .... for the moment.
Perhaps a combination of scanpst.exe and running with the /safe switch did
the trick. The only add-in I have for Outlook is Xobni.

Well DL, you did such a great job helping me with this issue, maybe you can
answer another one (actually two) for me.....

On my office computer, which runs Xobni and ShareO as add-ins, Outlook
periodically decides it wants to stay on top, which means if I open an email
to read it, or want to compose a new email, or open another program, the
main "page" of Outlook has to be minimized to see the other screens. Also,
the second office computer tends to freeze priodically when the two
computers are "communicating" through ShareO. (ShareO can't give me an
answer either.) Second, one of the two office computers doesn't seem to be
able to run in the "search" in Outlook (which is why we installed the Xobni
add-on). If you have a clue as to why these two issues are happening, I'd
love to hear what you have to say. If you don't have a clue, I understand.
These aren't necessarily Outlook questions.

 

[DL]

Dont really know about this, I have seen reports, here, of ShareO causing
problems

 

[Jan Groshan]

It was working quite well until I recently installed the most current update
that was supposed to clear up all known issues! Figures.