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Outlook 2007 Crash Update

June 19, 2006 at 9:23 pm · Filed under Cool, Software

My previous, Sir Crashalot post on Outlook 2007, prompted a comment and email from Steve Greenberg, the Program Manager for the Office Diagnostics tool. He was very interested in sorting out my crash problems and it started a series of email’s between myself and various peeps at Microsoft to help sort it out.

After two days of email’s my problems were sorted. The first was what I initially thought, an incompatible Add-In / Plugin for MindManager 6, whilst the second was the remains of my Office 2003 install. Outlook 2003 should have been removed when I installed Office 2007 but for some reason didn’t. The Office Diagnostics tool correctly noted it as a problem though, which was the start of my little adventure.

The Add-In problem, which was the cause of Outlook 2007 crashing, is simply because Mindjet don’t support pre-release versions of other software, which I found out via these two Mindjet forum links:

So I just like to say a big thanks to Greg Mansius (Outlook Beta Support Engineer) and Steve Greenberg for their help. It’s very much appreciated!

Rick Thomas said,

June 29, 2006 @ 5:52 pm

I am having trouble with 2007 beta Outlook not sending. Is there a way to contact Steve Greenberg for resolution?

Paul said,

June 29, 2006 @ 6:38 pm

I don’t know whether Steve would appreciate me handing out his email address since it sounds like your problem is related to Outlook and not the Diagnostics tool.

However I could email him with your details to see if he can do anything, if you like?

As a suggestion, have you tried running the Office 2007 installer and running the repair option?

denise said,

August 28, 2006 @ 10:06 pm

Ok well I have the entirely same problem without the plugins. It also did install with Outlook 2003, and then I uninstalled both 2003 and the beta. I then did a clean install of the beta, only to come back to Outlook crashing every other email I open, forward or reply to. It closes I have ran the diags and repaired nothing is helping. Any ideas?

Paul said,

August 28, 2006 @ 11:03 pm

Denise, try this Contact Us page for Office 2007. Might provide you with a way of contacting Microsoft to resolve the problem.

aram kovach said,

November 18, 2006 @ 6:00 am

office outlook 2007 beta 2 keeps crashing and restarting.

Derek N. said,

July 28, 2007 @ 3:06 am

Also, try deleting (or renaming) the file outcmd.dat – find it in the hidden folder –
c:\Documents and Settings/username/ApplicationData/Microsoft/Outlook – just rename it to outcmd.old

When you restart Outlook 2007, it will create a new fresh file. Mine had something to do with customizing the toolbar – the outcmd.dat file got corrupted and needed to be rebuild. Lost my menu customizations, but no big deal – at least it does not crash now.

pablo said,

November 19, 2007 @ 3:13 pm

hi, My oulook 2007 started crashing when send receive for no apparent reason. Run Office diagnostics – no problems were found. Contacted MS support but after a week of long calls, no solution could be found. Could you please provide me with Steve Greenberg´s mail just to check if he could get interested on my case?
thanks!

Paul said,

November 19, 2007 @ 3:19 pm

pablo, I’m reluctant to give out his email address since it looks like your issue is with Outlook and not the Diagnostics tool, which is what Steve is / was the PM for.

You might want to try the Official Outlook blog and try contacting them:
http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/

dillon said,

November 29, 2007 @ 4:33 pm

I found this webpage while surfing the causes of Word 2007 and Outlook 2007 crashes. I used to have Office 2003 and it ran fine. Then I paid $460+ for Office 2007 and I have been in computing hell ever since. I am now so jumpy when I use Word or Outlook I save about every 30 seconds. On my ordinary Dell D620 laptop with 2 GB memory all appas run great except for Office 2007 which is very unstable. Beyond being much slower than Office 2003, both Word and Outlook 2007 crash frequently at random intervals. I am not talking about those polite Office 2007 requests to crash and phone home with an error report, I am referring to grinding, infinite stops in the middle of work that one cannot even ctrl-alt-del out of. When I say random, that’s exactly what I mean: Word or Outlook might run ok 3 or 4 times in a row, then crash, then run ok, then crash 3 or 4 times in a row. I repeat that all other apps on my laptop run fine. How about this: when Word and/or Oulook are open on the desktop along with IE7 and I want to switch the focus from IE7 to either Word or Outlook a 30 second (I am not exaggerating) grind takes place before the switch occurs or the app crashes outright. No other app does this and I run some complex engineering and math programs.

MS Support has been zero help. Some guy from Bangalore called and wanted to uninstall all the Office 2007 add-ins one at a time to find the problem? Who in the world has time for that? And why should we have to fight or software on an ordinary PC to get it to function. Anyway, I only have one 3rd party add-in, Acrobat Standard 8.1.1, which is the lastest software and approved by MS. All 17 other add-ins (that right, 17!!) were dumped into Word 2007 by the Office 2007 setup program, including crud like Paypal! I disabled all that stuff and the program still crashes at random intervals.

I have applied for a Office 2007 refund, less some fair price for Access 2007 and related SQL components which is the reason I upgraded (??!) from Office 2003 in the first place.

One other thing I’d like to mention. I found the Office 2007 menu structure absolutely chaotic. I am an experience Office user and Office 2007 made me fell like a beginner searching even for the most elementary commands. Ridiculous.

I downloaded Open Office and while not loaded with features I’ll never use like Office 2007, it is stable and super quick compared to the Microsoft product and it costs $460+ dollars less.

Greg said,

December 10, 2007 @ 4:40 pm

I have been unable to open Word documents from with Outlook since updating 2003 to 2007 I have resolved it with a very simple fix. I read above in the main article that it was suspected to be residues from Outlook 2003. So, I ran ccleaner (which removed and invalid/old registry entries) and hey presto.

Fred said,

February 1, 2008 @ 7:59 pm

I immediately trust the advice of anyone who says “hey presto!” because I know they know that Outlook crashes are nasty uncomfortable things that make you late for dinner. I’ll give ccleaner a try. Thanks!

Ya hey! Ya herri hey! Ya hoy!

Scodie said,

May 10, 2009 @ 11:47 pm

As I sit here reading these comments, Outlook is chewing about 60% of my CPU and has been doing so for about 10 minutes since it became unresponsive in the middle of my writing a note.

Once, several years ago, I lost a fairly length sticky “note” I was writing in Outlook during a crash (irritiating because if there was a File-Save option for notes I would have used it). So until recently I didn’t dare try Outlook notes again for fear of losing my work and favoured Notepad and messy textfiles on my desktop instead.

Now, having tried to use Outlook sticky notes again and evidently having lost more work, I’m afraid it’s back to Notepad for me.

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