Saturday 28 November 2009

Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook error



Although I'm not a big fan of e-mail clients, I did start using outlook recently because I could use it to sync calendar items with my phone (through Sony Ericsson's Sync Tool and sync to Google Calendar Online). However, it turns out that one fine day, Outlook refuses to open.

Here's an exact version of the error (Copied by pressing Control + Insert keys) I recieved when I tried to open Outlook:
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Microsoft Office Outlook
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Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window. The set of folders cannot be opened. Errors have been detected in the file C:\Users\Rishi\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst. Quit Outlook and all mail-enabled applications, and then use the Inbox repair tool (Scanpst.exe) to diagnose and repair errors in the file. For more information about the Inbox repair tool, see Help.
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OK
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Turns out that the .PST file itself was corrupt, so Outlook had problems opening it. What I did to solve it was to close outlook, and simply delete the file. When outlook started up again, it seemed to work properly.  Of course, I did have to setup everything again, so I'd recommend deleting the PST file only if you don't mind doing this. Also, you'll probably loose all of your email address autofill data, so deleting the file is not always recommended.

Some other alternatives to this may be to use the Scanpst.exe tool, and see if that can help solve the problem.




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