Wednesday, September 1, 2010

What to do when Outlook won’t open the Outlook window

OUTLOOK Q&A

By Joe Dolittle

Reader James wrote in with a curious question:

When I click the Outlook icon an error message appears that says the computer "cannot open the Outlook window"" though it can enable me to do this when I clicked your address link on your Web page. Can you help me sort it out?

Sigh. Outlook is like that sometimes. This can occur for a variety of reasons, but the most common is the result of an update of Outlook 2007 to Service Pack 2. Yeah, updates. I know.

Anyway, your best chance of solving the problem is to type "outlook.exe /resetnavpane" (without the quotes) into Windows' type-in field, as shown in Figure A.

FIGURE A

Try this. No guarantees, but it might work. (click for larger image)

Hit enter, let Outlook do its thing, and reboot. If the gods are smiling on you, all will be right with the world.

P.S. Oh, yeah. If you're running on XP, type that string into the Run box on your Start menu. Same deal.