Outlook 2007 Beta – Crashing
May 31, 2006 by Jason Bean
Filed under Computers
I’m frequently getting crashes when using Outlook 2007 Beta. They seem to occur frequently when I hit “Reply” for an e-mail. I’ll submit the error to Microsoft and the program will restart and everything will work fine then.
This last time I ran the Microsoft Office Diagnostics tests and didn’t get any results after the various scans.
Has anyone else run into these problems? Anyone got any ideas? I was actually prompted to download a patch to Adobe Acrobat Reader as it was recommended. The patch was 17MB! That’s one, big patch man! What’s the deal with Adobe Reader’s burgeoning file size? The trial for 7.0 was 115MB! I don’t want to hear anyone complain of bloated file sizes if they’re using Adobe products. “Hello, Pot? This is Kettle, you’re black!”
[UPDATE: Whew! This is happening on pretty much every other reply/restart combo. I must be really patient though, because it reports, shuts-down and restarts the application so quick, it's really not too annoying.]
Had the same problem and was advised to download the Adobe file at 17Mb but it keeps stopping at 13MB and refusing to download fully….ah well the joy of a Beta!
Are you referring to the ‘Reply’ button in the main Outlook window or the message window? I personally haven’t had problems with either, but I am careful to always send my emails in HTML, as I’ve had a few occasions when Outlook hung while trying to load a HTML email.
Have you tried reinstalling?
I’m not sure why I didn’t think about it, but I was always using the “Reply” button on the main Outlook window. I’ll try the other shortly. I’m sending in HTML almost everytime as well, but sending in both.
Jason,
I just installed Outlook 2007 beta 2 on my home system yesterday and am having exactly the same problem you wrote about – Outlook crashes every time I hit reply. If I can’t figure out some way to deal with this I’ll have to uninstall the program and go back to 2003. Not sure what else to try.
Please let me know if you have any good ideas.
Rick
I get the same problems. I think I’ve read there’s a major problem with the 2007 format being incompatible or attempting to replace pdf’s so adobe is suing and it’s probably all related to our crashes.
I am having the same exact problem. When I hit reply or new message it crashes and sends a report that comes back to blame Adobe as needing an update… After outlook restarts it lets me click on new message or reply once, until it crashes the next time..
Is there no solution?
I was having the same problem, and it seems Arobat is to blame. I uninstalled all versions of Acrobat on my computer, then reinstalled Acrobat 7 reader and it doesn’t crash anymore, so try that if you can. Unfortunately, I now consistently get crashes when I CLOSE Outlook 2007. Uggh, the joys of a beta…
I found that you can play with Adobe – I don’t know what will happen with the law suit – and I have not gotten outlook to stop crashing. Although, these are the two tricks I used:
(a) if your using IE 7.0 Beta – Try to install firefox and set it as your default browser – this seems to make HTML easier for outlook.
(b) I cannot deal with this fix – but you could uninstall all of Adobe. Why? Microsoft now saves in PDF – Whohooo. Downer: If you have eFax or other programs you want to “print” to PDF – your program will be gone… Oh what to do…
I was also getting this problem but found the simple solution to the problem is to goto Add/Remove Programs, locate the Adobe install and click Change, there are several options to allow you to turn off the integration of Adobe with Outlook and Office. I simply removed these options and it solved the problem without needing to uninstall Adobe which I use for other things. Note: You will need the Adobe CD to chnage this option. Another possible solution (which I haven’t tried) is to turn off the Adobe plugin in Outlook by going to the Tools/Customize menu and unchecking Adobe.
Hope this help.
under Tools–Trust Center I removed the pdf add in and have not had a problem since..
I have noticed that things, esp. Outlook is running much slower since I installed the Beta. It seems to use up much more of the computers resources than 2002 did..
I can get to Tool/Trust Center, but i can’t remove the PDF add in, how can i do this?
I just clicked on it (removed the check box first – maybe that is enough?) and then clicked the delete button on the side (or was it remove?)..
GOSH! If you are having trouble with Outlook crashing, simply hold down the CONTROL key while you start outlook and choose to start in safe mode. I appear to have all the functionality I need in safe mode – and nothing crashes!!! This is a much better solution than having to uninstall all of Adobe!!!
I was having the same issues but i went into the Add-ins Section and unticked the pdfmoutlook and hit ok.
Now it does not hang on the second attempt to hit new, reply, replyall buttons now.
Thanks Peeps.
Office 2007 beta crashes when I check mail. States Business contact manager has an error and must restart. It does not resolve the error and continues to restart. Outlook will not open and stay open. I cannot check my email.
control start seems to work for now.
Disabling Outlook integration from Adobe (Add/Remove Programs, Change) stopped crashes for me! This has been my only issue with Beta2 so far.
I also had the same issue and removed the PDFMOutlook add-in and all is good.
-Paco
Disabling the Outlook integration from the original Adobe (Add/Remove Programs, Change) install also stopped issues for me.
Thaks for sharing the pain!
-BJ
Same same for me. Thanks!!
Disabling the PDF plugin under Tools/Trust Centre solved my crashing problem – Thanks Dale
Disabling the PDF plugin under Tools/Trust Centre solved my crashing problem too.
Thx everyone.
Disabling the PDF plugin solved my crashing problem too.
Thx everyone.
Holding the Ctl Key when booting Outlook works great….Best Idea Yet. Thanks
I tried several of the options listed here. I could not ‘turn off’ the pdf plugin so I renamed it. So far, so good. Good Luck!
Misery loves company. What a pain. Thanks for the optional solutions.
Disabling Adobe add-in worked for me too. Following is the instruction on how to disable the PDFMOutlook add-in:
1)On the Tools menu, click Trust Center, and then click Add-ins.
2) In the Manage box, select “COM Add-ins” and click go.
3) Uncheck the box next to PDFMOutlook.
Good Luck!
Great ideas all of you! Holding ctrl while starting outlook worked fine as removing the pdfm. At six a clock in the morning you will probably forget all about the ctrl-key and there we are again!
Tnx 4 all the tips guys
Ok
Removed PDF plugin, worked for a while.
Now crashes and restarts in a permanent loop.
Control key – safe start – doesnt cure as this also errors and restarts.
Will have to think this one through as I have now resorted to using Outlook Web Access to access my corporate email.
One thing that I have found is that Outlook 2003 and earlier versions seemed alot more tolerant of pst file corruption than 2007 is, and also that if 2007 crashes a few times, it will potentially heinously corrupt .pst files (and .ost files if you are using exchange caching), and if Outlook doesn’t figure out and automatically repair it on startup, you will get into a start crash loop. Use the scanpst.exe and scanost.exe files (office default install location/office12 directory, not the weird 1033 dir they used to be in), for which outlook must not be running (and Yahoo desktop search, and other things that access .psts must also be stopped). Once your .pst(s) / .osts are repaired, Outlook should not only start OK again, but if you have big .psts, it will probably run a bit better too. AN alternative for repairing an .ost is also renaming it (for backup purposes), and letting Outlook recreate it based on what is stored on exchange (you will lose almost nothing, what you do lose may be a couple of view settings like shortcuts to folders and what not).
Eddie – I am having the same problem, although it seemed to occur with Outlook 2003 on my machine as well. I am going to rip out office and try, try again.
I really dont understand what is going on here, however I now have a suspicion that there is a network/authentication issue.
Having continuously had crashes I have turned on my machine this morning and hey presto all is working ok. Thats with no software changes or machine reconfigs or repairs.
Interesting aspect was that the crashes seemed to occur when the dialgoue in the botton right corner said outlook was connecting with Exchange server. Today this was pre-empted by a meeting reminder first, then I saw the connect to the server. I then got my local pst updated from the server and now all is stable and working.
Could it be that something got out of step the other day and caused the corruption and with the meeting reminder coming up first today, the update/sync from the server cleaned up last weeks corruption?
Thoughts…..
Hi,
Hope this isn’t too far off the mark for this forum (newbie here).
Before I install and start using Outlook 2007 Beta, what are the consequences if I bail out and uninstall it?
i.e. do I revert back to my Original Outlook 2002?
What happens to the email, appointments, contacts, etc. that I created while using Outlook 2007? Will Outlook 2002 just pick everything up or does everything go in the bit-bucket?
Also, is there a database backup built into 2007?
Sorry for all the questions, but Microsoft obviously provides nothing informational other than a “Buy me” button. ;-)
Thanks,
TTC Dave
TTC Dave,
Outlook 2007 can use the same PST format as Outlook 2002. So you shouldn’t have any problems moving from one to the other if you decide to uninstall the beta and go back to your original version.
Obviously, any specific features to 2007 would not be available with the old version (like colored categories).
Other than archiving your PST folders, I’ve not found any details about database backup built into 2007.
Thanks to Jensen Harris for assisting me with the answers to your question.
As for the PDF vs Outlook 2007 dilemma. . .
Why isn’t the fix addressed in the Online Crash Report returned from Microsoft? This is such an easy fix for such a very annoying problem.
Simply go to tools > trust center > add ins, and then at the bottom of the screen select COM Add-ins from the drop down menu box, and hit the go button. From the next screen deselect (remove checkmark) PDFMOutlook.
This seems to have worked for me. If not, I’m going back and deleting it altogether.
Thank you Folks for your guidance! You pointed me in the right direction.
Mike
WOO HOOOOOO
Been having problems with this for a few days now. I had switched off AV scanner for email, but still had the problem of crashing and no preview pane etc etc, until I took the advice of you guys and especially Dale Dixon. All working fine! woo hoo
Thanks!
I had the same problem with “Reply” crashes and had removed Adobe completely as an add-in….that solved the crashes, but my Outlook takes forever to load and then takes forever to download email.
While it is doing these tasks all other use of Outlook (previewing email etc.) is frozen.
When I hit “Reply” my cursor sometimes disappears and I have to click the mouse for it to reappear and the mail subject that I highlight to preview becomes “unhighlighted” when I move the cursor to the message “preview” pane.
Also, the Junk Mail filter does not trap email from countries or languages I have selected in the “Blocked Top Level Domain List” or the “Blocked Encodings List” under “Junk Mail Options”.
So I get hundreds of emails from South America, Eastern Europe and South Asia which I specifically blocked in the options lists.
I have made numerous “rules and Alerts” but Outlook pays no attention to them and puts some of my “approved Email” in the Junk mail Box and some of my “ruled out” email in my “inbox”.
Additionally when I recently updated my “Spamaware” spam blocker add-in that was working fine in the 2007 Beta, Outlook now shows the add-in in the add-in list however the toolbar for the add-in is grayed out and not useable.
Of course I have removed and installed this add-in but to no avail. And…I have redone the Junk Email Option checklist a few times, also to no avail.
Not being able to select multiple messages vs single messages in the in-box and designate them as “Blocked Senders” in the Junk Mail drop-down is a real pain.
Additionally I see that MS does not have any prepositioned Junk Mail filter update option for 2007 as it has for Outlook 2003.
Has anyone had similar problems and found fixes? Appreciate any help. Dave.
I removed the PDFM add-in and crashing after every-other reply stopped. I also had problems w/ everything being slow with 512Mb RAM, but upgraded to 2 Gb and now everything runs fine. 2007 seems to be a LOT more resource hungry.
truning off the adobe perfrence in add and remove programs worked for me perfect
I have tried Outlook on 3 different systems, including one built to run Windows Vista. All programs work, BUT Outlook 2007. Always crashes on opening the second email. This was before any “Adobe” product was installed on the new Vista machine, therefore I am sceptical about Adobe being the cause.
Had to uninstall that version and re-install Outlook XP (2003). Kept all the other 2007 programs which work well, but I miss the “RSS” feature as it will greatly simplify data once the program becomes stable. I will try the fixes mentioned above and report back in a day or two. It seems that the instability is very wide spread. What about all the useres out there who can’t handle an un-install? Sadly, it is a real problem. Stability before release will be greatly appreciated. I am looking forward to RC1.
outlook 2007 beta does not crash with me, but it simply hibernates my laptop as soon as I want to put some text into an email (new or reply). will uninstall the beta unless someone knows a solution.
Thanks guys removing the pdf outlookm add in seems to do the trick
(1st time blogger on this site-FWIW)
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I have had pretty much the same problems generally mentioned above. For the longest time (couple months), Outlook2007 worked fine. Now I can’t even open it to try eliminating Adobe Reader (BTW, though I too got the suggestion to get the Adobe ACROBAT patch, nd trtye installing it, I couldn’t goto completion – don’t remember reason, but essentially ACROBAT is not installed on my system.) When the Microsoft Office Diagnostics tests reported I should get the AA patch, I didn’t think Acrobat was installed. However, a search showed many instances of files/folders named Acrobat (something). So I went to each instance and found NO ACROBAT app installed – apparently many files/folders with Acrobat titling are part of the Adobe READER install that came preloaded with my new tabletPC. In any case, I did run the patch, and (as I said above) it wouldn’t complete. Now, when I try to open Outlook, it gives a message:
“Cannot start MS Office Outlook. MAPI32.DLL is corrupt or the wrong version. This could have been caused by installing other messaging software. Please reinstall Outlook”
Well, there are several instances of MAPI32.DLL throughout my system, and wouldn’t know which one to update. I also assume MS means by “messaging software” either Outlook Express, or “Messenger”.
Bottom line: I can’t open Outlook at all now, and if I try a “Properties” query, I get a msg from stating:
“You need more memry or sys resrcs. Close some windows and try again”
“MS Ofc Outlk cannot run the add-in” (which one?
MS Ofc Outlk cannot install the necess. files due to Win Instalr err 1605″ (what’s that?)
and finally (on that alert), This action is only valid for products that are corrctly instald” (Which WERE instald “proprly)
BTW, abbreviations are mine.
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Another err msg on trying to open Outlk: :the app. failed to initlz proprly (0×80000003). Clk on OK to termnt the prgrm”
Sorry for length of this input, but hoped it might shed more light on the problem – with a prayer for a solution.
Thanx for your patience, and wish I knew more about how these computers work.
s/dennis
my hibernating problems are over, after reinstallation of the whole system (don’t know what caused the problem).
I did have the same error:
“Cannot start MS Office Outlook. MAPI32.DLL is corrupt or the wrong version. This could have been caused by installing other messaging software. Please reinstall Outlook”
Shortly after installation. This error came up after a office update through the windows update site. This site was updating my outlook 2003, which wasn’t even there.
For me the solution was to do a repair on outlook. I started the exe for installation of office 2007 and choose repair. Probably the solution for you (dgarbis) as well?
I have been trying to find an answer for this for days. Disabling the PDFM and it works perfectly. Now if I can find the answer to my Excel 2007 sort problem I’ll be set.
Deron,
Glad we could help. Share your problem with the group. I’ll post it as a separate entry and see what kind of solutions the intelligence of the masses can come up with for you.
I, too, was having regular crashes except under differing “triggers”. In the beginning, Outlook would recover and work fine for a while. Then, at some point after many occurences, It (Outlook) didn’t recover. I also used the “MS Office Diagnostic tests” with the same recommendation – the problem was with Adobe Acrobat! (NOTE: It said “Acrobat” – not “A. Reader”. I didn’t have A. Acrobat on my system!) When I was directed to the patch on the Adobe site, they discussed the “known” problem, and offered the patch as a way to fix the problem. I downloaded the patch and applied it. No luck! Problem still there.
Ever since, when I try to launch Outlook (12 or 11) I get an alert:
“Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. MAPI32.DLL is corrupt or the wrong version. This could have been caused by installing other messaging software. Please reinstall Outlook.”
A search of my C: drive for MAPI32.DLL yielded 5 (or 6) instances, However, a Google (as well as an MS) search lead me to several sites that offered SW to clean up dll’s – none of which resolved the problem, (Unfortunately, the programs (supposedly “free”) cost about $30 each to work completely. I paid, but still no luck. I have no way to know what the correct version is, much less where to find a copy that I can replace the errant dll.
I have tried reinstalling v12, as well as v11 – neither works and both give me the same message, so now don’t have use of Outlook at all!. Outlook Express works, but prefer to use Outlook for all its utility. BTW, when trying to find a copy of v12 on the MS websites, can’t find one anymore. (I thought that my original downloaded copy is corrupt).
Any help/guidance would be greatly appreciated. TIA/dennis garbis ( or )
FROM: 45.evelyne Says: July 31st, 2006 at 9:47 am
“For me the solution was to do a repair on outlook. I started the exe for installation of office 2007 and choose repair. Probably the solution for you (dgarbis) as well?”
Thanx evelyne. Tried that – no luck!
Well Folks, I tried everything, deleted half of my hard drive contents, drank 3 pots of coffee and 4 beers and then, in a giddy, hyper caffinated state of absolute desperation I went to mouse configuration in control panel and enabled “cursor trails” and ..viola….zee mouse, she is back. No more problemoes.
After disabling all unnecessary add-ins and disabling “searchindexer.exe” I have experienced no crashes, lockups, etc.. Additionally, my outlook 2007 (beta) runs fairly swiftly and functions normally.
Thanks to all for your ideas and help!
Now if I could just get my “Junk Mail” filter to work as advertised.
Dave
You guys rock, I was pulling my hair out until I found these suggestions. PDA add-on was also the problem I was having.