Greetings from the tech room again.

You ever been unable to open Outlook?  Not the normal “will not connect to server” or hexidecimal error message, but I’m talking about Outlook opening momentarily, then shutting down.  The exact error I encountered on Vista SP2 recently was, “Cannot start Office Outlook.  Cannot open Outlook window.”

This next tip helps resolve that issue easily:

1.  Go to Start, Run, and type: outlook /resetnavpane

2.  Click OK.

If the navigation panel add-on was causing your issue(s), this should resolve it.  Essentially this add-on has become corrupted and prevents Outlook from opening.  Resetting the panel should allow Outlook to open again and begin pulling your mail.

Should your issue still persist, I suggest trying the following:

1.  Repairing your .pst file

2.  Running Office Diagnostics

3.  Opening Outlook in safemode and then running Detect and Repair

4.  Creating a new profile and then re-creating the Outlook account

5.  Creating a new Windows profile and repeating step 4.

6.  Running check disk on your hard drive

7.  Uninstalling/Reinstalling Office

8.  Backing up data and formatting and reinstalling Windows.

Thanks for reading, and until next time, surf the web safely and wisely.