Cannot open Microsoft Outlook

[JohnEHoffman]

I installed Windows 7 x64 and Office Professional Plus Academic x32 on a new computer last week. All programs other than Outlook are working normally. Initially, Outlook opened and I set up my email profiles and opened existing pst files. Now when I try to start OUtlook, I get a message "Cannot start Microsoft Outlook."

I have tried repairing the installation of Office and also uninstalling and reinstalling Office, but keep getting the same message. One article I saw on the Internet suggested opening Mail on the Control Panel and redoing profiles. However, when I try to open Mail, I get a message "Your computer needs more memory or system resources. Close some windows and try again." I have closed all other windows, rebooted and tried again, but still keep getting the same message despite having an i750 processor and 8 GB of memory.

I'm stumped. Any help would be most appreciated.

John Hoffman

[WendellB]

Does your "Office Professional Plus Academic x32" mean that you are running Office 2010? If so do you have any Outlook addins installed? That seems to be the most common issue with Outlook 2010 misbehaving - many of the popular addins have not yet been made compatible with 2010.

[JohnEHoffman]

I should have been clearer. Yes, I am using Office 2010. However, I am not running any add-ins to Outlook. I do have a beta of Acrobat 10 installed, but there were no problems as between that and Office 2010 on my older computer that I just replaced.

[WendellB]

Hmmmm - if that's the case it sounds like something has been corrupted in your profile or your PST file. See if the steps suggested in this web page are of any help. They appear to have worked for quite a few folks based on some comments on the Microsoft support threads.

[JohnEHoffman]

Thanks very much for your help.

I have now tried everything suggested in the article you attached, but unfortunately with no success.

Unless someone has some other ideas in the next day or two, I'll uninstall Office, use RegEdit to remove all references from the registry, manually delete all files I can find and try reinstalling. I was hoping to avoid that time-consuming and tedious task.

[WendellB]

I can't say I blame you - that's major pain to go through - but I'm afraid I don't have any better suggestions.

[jwitalka]

Can you open Outlook in Safe Mode? See
http://www.outlook-tips.net/beginner/safemode.htm

[JohnEHoffman]

Thanks for the suggestion. I was unaware that one could open Outlook in safe mode. Unfortunately, it doesn't help. I still get the "Cannot start Microsoft Outlook" message. I also tried the variants using run, outlook.exe /safe:1 and then safe:2, safe:3 and safe:4.

I'm now even more frustrated than before. After trying all the proposed solutions (reset navpane, run scanpst, system restore) without success, and not finding any other proposed solutions online, I did a clean install of Windows 7, reinstalled Office 2010 Professional Academic, set up the email accounts, and had everything running fine. Then after I reinstalled other programs I use (including Adobe Design Premium CS5, WordPerfect X4, Firefox, Skype, and several smaller programs, I got the "Cannot open Microsoft Outlook" message again. Uninstalling everything other than Office did not solve the problem.

I guess I could reinstall Windows 7 and Office again, and then try opening Outlook each time as I reinstall a program to see which is causing the conflict. However, that solution would involve doing at least two more clean installs of Windows 7 and Office 2010 and I'm too tired and frustrated now to undertake that extensive a job.

I may have to just forget Outlook and use webmail instead, unless someone can come up with something that works and is simpler than reinstalling everything.

[WendellB]

It sounds almost certain that one of the other applications you installed after you had Office running is clobbering one or more files in the Outlook 2010 installation. Rather than doing a clean install twice more, how about doing one more just through Office, doing an image of your system at that point, and then adding programs one at a time until the culprit is identified. Then just restore from the image and install the apps that don't do in Outlook. But I can sure understand your frustration...

[JohnEHoffman]

Eventually, I'll probably reinstall Windows and then one program at a time, checking after each to see which is clobbering Outlook, as you suggest Wendel. However, as I am sure you know, it is a very time-consuming process since all the preferences have to be set in a myriad of programs, e.g., website setups in Dreamweaver, colors in Photoshop, profiles in Firefox, as well as links to pst files and email account setups in Outlook and links to existing notebooks in One Note. I need to get some actual work done, so that kind of procedure will have to wait, especially since I can get my email through webmail until I get Outlook working.

Until I get around to doing reinstalling everything, I'll keep an eye on the web for new solutions since someone else is likely to run into the problem. I'm hoping there is an easy solution.

[WendellB]

I stumbled on something that is probably a long shot, but much less of an effort to try. Take a look at You Need More Memory or System Resources - it is for a much older Outlook, but it suggests that MAPI is not configured correctly. The link in that article probably doesn't apply, but another forum suggests that it is a conflict with Outlook Express. You shouldn't be running Outlook Express (unless one of the apps tries to activate it), but Windows Live Mail may have the same issue with it being set as the default simple MAPI client.

[JohnEHoffman]

Wendell:

Thank you VERY much for spending so much time helping me. That is service above and beyond the call of duty.

I am delighted to report that I have now solved the problem.

First, one step that did NOT solve the problem: I uninstalled Office 2010 32 bit and installed Office 2010 64 bit. The problem remained. When I tried to open Outlook, I still got the message "Cannot Open Microsoft Outlook."

The page you referenced did not have the answer, but it led me to search on "Your System Needs More Memory or System Resources," rather than on "Microsoft Outlook Cannot Start." Ultimately, I found the answer on the following page:

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/...4-30135578746e

The answer is scattered through several messages on that page. Here are the steps in logical order for anyone else who may into the same problem of Outlook refusing to open.:

1. Close all Office programs.
2. Run regedit.
3. Back up registry in case things go wrong.
4. Delete the following key if present in either or both of HKEY_CURRENT_USER and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (in my case, it:was present only in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE)

Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\Windows Messaging Subsystem

5. Close regedit and try opening Outlook. It should now open with the initial welcoming screen, inviting you to set up email accounts.

6. The following steps are probably unnecessary, but are good prophylactic measures to avoid problems:

Close Outlook
Reboot
Open Control Panel, Programs and Features. Repair Office by highlighting the Office entry, clicking on Change, and then repair.
Reboot again.
Then open Outlook, set up the email accounts, and hopefully have Outlook run forever without further problems.

[WendellB]

So if I understand you are now running the 64-bit version of Office 2010. If so, I've had no experience with that - I avoided it during the Beta, and even Microsoft cautions you about using it unless you really need the power afforded with the larger address space. I would proceed with caution, and let us know how you get on with the 64-bit version.

[JohnEHoffman]

I too used the 32 bit version of the Technical Preview and Beta of Office 2010. (I wanted to try it early primarily because of the new Open Type features in Word.) I then installed the 32 bit version of the released product on my old computer with no problems at all. I suspect I ran into problems on the new machine because Office was one of the first programs I installed, rather than the last, and one of the other programs, perhaps one of the Adobe CS5 programs, clobbered the registry setting for Outlook.

So far, I've had no problems at all with the 64 bit version of Office 2010--but I've only opened Outlook, One Note, and a few documents in Word. As I understand it, the problems with the 64 bit version are mostly with add-ins that have not been recompiled for x64, and I don't believe I use any.such add-ins.

The problem I was having with opening Outlook does not appear to be related to whether one uses the 32 bit version or the 64 bit version. If I were writing on a clean slate, I'd follow MS's recommendation and install the 32 bit version since I don't use huge Excel spreadsheets, However, having spent so much time getting Outlook to open, I plan to continue using the 64 bit version I currently have installed unless and until I run into some problems. I have 4 email accounts set up in Outlook and the pst files for each are on a separate data drive since I am using a relatively small solid state drive for my boot disk. Each account must be set up manually because my ISP contracts with Google for email service and the entries are nonstandard. Setting up the email accounts is thus a tedious task.

Thanks again for your help.

Finally, I'd like to commend MS for conducting public betas of Win 7 and Office 2010. The result is much more polished products than we've seen from MS in a while. I've used Office 2000, XP, 2007 and 2010. XP and 2010 were the best two in my experience.

[Opensecret]

I'm very grateful to JohnEHoffman for his persistence and for posting this solution. I had the same problem, it was driving me nuts, and the fix he suggested (deleting the specified registry key) enabled me to get Outlook to open.

In my case, this was part of a puddle of problems that pooled up when I tried to upgrade my boot drive to a solid state drive. Intel provides downloadable migrating software for its SSDs to move an image from the old to the new drive. That seemed to work fine until Windows told me my copy of Win7 wasn't genuine. A conversation with an MS tech didn't go at all well, particularly when he told me that trying to upgrade my drive amounted to piracy. After much on-line search and experimentation, I finally gave up and reinstalled Win7. That meant reinstalling all the software, and for some reason, when I reinstalled Office 2010, I ran into problems with both Word and Outlook. A new normal.dotm fixed Word without too much pain, but Outlook just flatly refused to start until I applied the Hoffman fix. Since the same Outlook had run before on the same machine with the same operating system, this was puzzling.

I've mostly been happy with Win7 and Office 2010, but today I suffered some alienation of affection.