Outlook Error Island - The Story No One Would Expect
February 21st, 2008
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I was cast onto the deserted space of the world known as Outlook Error Island today. For the past 6 hours I’ve been dealing with a bad add-in install. Bad thing is, since it wasn’t third party (I mean who would think a problem would come in something from Microsoft) Outlook wouldn’t even start in safe mode.
Whippee!!!
Just in case anyone has this happen, this is what I did (this is Outlook 2003 btw). Bad thing is this gets rid of all your customized settings so be sure you’ve tried every other alternative before going this route. This journey is only for those who have no where else to turn.
First I got Thunderbird… I know why not just use that? I’m not going to waste your time explaining why. Every chicken has it’s coop.
Anyway…
I imported my mail and contacts over to Thunderbird. This isn’t absolutely necessary but I wanted to be safe rather than sorry in case something happened to my PST file with Outlook.
The next thing
I opened up Word (since Outlook wouldn’t open) and went Help -> Detect and Repair. Then I checked the box talking about restoring default settings.
This gave me a basically brand new install of Outlook. At first I tried to go through the set up and use the Business Contact Mgr (BCM) but guess what… it started throwing errors at me again.
So I went through the above process again and chose to not use the BCM with it and it loaded fine. Luckily, I was able to import my PST file (after about 30 mins… I know, I know… I’m taking care of that now) and everything is golden again. Now I just need to recreate my business contact list (luckily I can do that), set up my email accounts and everything will *hopefully* be functioning right in the world again.
Hope this possibly helps someone who has found themselves stranded on Outlook Error Island.
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Tags: outlook, outlook troubleshooting, outlook safe mode, outlook errors
