Cannot open your Outlook 2013, Outlook 2016 or Outlook 2019? In this article you will find really working solutions for "Cannot start Microsoft Outlook" problem that will help you have your Outlook up and running again with no errors. The fixes work in all versions of Outlook and on all systems.
A few articles ago we discussed what can be done when Outlook is freezing and not responding. Today, let's see how you can fix and prevent an even worse scenario when your Outlook does not open at all.
The main symptom of this problem is very obvious and easily recognizable: you click Outlook's icon, an hourglass appears and is hanging for a while, and then you get the "Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook" error.
According to Microsoft, the major cause of this issue is a corrupted Navigation Pane settings file - profilename.xml, where "profilename" is the name of your Outlook profile. A good indication that the file is corrupted is when its size is 0 KB. No one knows the exact reason why this happens, but all versions of Microsoft Outlook from 2003 to the newest Outlook 2019 may be affected.
Other reasons may be when you run Outlook in the compatibility mode, or if you are using a profile created in an older Outlook version, or if the Outlook data file (.pst or .ost) was deleted or damaged as the result of incorrect uninstallation or reinstallation of Outlook.
Anyway, whatever the reason is, the outcome is the same - you cannot open the Outlook window because of this error: "Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window. The set of folders cannot be opened."There may be a few variations of this message depending on which Outlook version you use.
Outlook 2003: "Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Unable to open the Outlook window. Invalid XML, the view cannot be loaded."
How to fix "Cannot start Microsoft Outlook" issue - universal solutionsNow that you know what causes problems on Outlook start up, let's see how we can get them fixed. Below you will find the troubleshooting steps for 4 most common problems that prevent Outlook from starting correctly, listed in order of frequency and efficiency:
In most cases it is the corrupted Navigation Pane settings file that prevents Outlook from starting successfully, so the first thing you need to do is to mend it. Here's how you can do this on different operating systems:
Note: An automatic fix for "Outlook unable to start" problem is available of Microsoft's site for Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP. Simply click "Fix this problem" link on this page.
Delete the Navigation pane settings file
If for some reason you were not able to recover the Navigation pane configuration file, nor did the automatic fix provided by Microsoft work, try to delete the XML file that stores the navigation pane settings. To do this, proceed with the following steps:
%appdata%\Microsoft\Outlook
If you have reinstalled Outlook recently and something went wrong during uninstallation of the previous version, the default Outlook data file (.pst / .ost) might have been deleted or damaged, which is why Outlook won't open. In this case you are likely to get this error: "Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. The file Outlook.pst is not a personal folders file."
Alternatively, you can click Start and type scanpst.exe in the Search box.
Try to open Outlook and if it starts without errors, congratulations! You do not need the remainder of this article : ) Or maybe, it's worth to bookmark it for the future.
Turn off Compatibility mode in OutlookWhen it comes to using compatibility mode in Outlook, let me quote a wisdom that Outlook's guru Diane Poremsky shared on her blog: "If you enabled compatibility mode, disable it. If you haven't, don't even consider it."
Alternatively, you can find outlook.exe in the default installation folder: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office version. Where Office version is Office15 if you are using Office 2013, Office14 for Office 2010 and so on.
For full details, see Microsoft's step-by-step guidance on creating a new Outlook profile.
If your old .pst file contains very important data that you absolutely cannot live without, you can try some third-part tools to repair your PST file, e.g. described in this article: Five reliable Outlook PST file repair tools. I cannot recommend any particular tool because luckily have never had to use any on my own machine.
Start Outlook in Safe Mode without any extensionsStarting Outlook in Safe Mode actually means that it will be run without any add-ins that are currently installed on your machine. It is the fastest way to determine if the problem on Outlook start up is caused by some of the add-ins.
To open Outlook in safe mode, click on its icon holding the Ctrl key, or click paste outlook /safe in the search box and press Enter. Outlook will display a message asking you to confirm that you really want to start it in safe mode, click Yes.An alternative way is to use the outlook.exe /noextensions command, which basically means the same - start Outlook without any extensions.
If Outlook starts fine in safe mode, the problem is definitely with one of your add-ins. Try to disable the add-ins one at a time to detect which one is causing the problem. You can find the detailed information in : How to disable Outlook add-ins.
Fix Outlook hanging on Loading ProfileThis problem is most typical for Office 365/Office 2019/Office 2016/Office 2013 but it may occur in Outlook 2010 and lower versions too. The main symptom is Outlook hanging on the Loading Profile screen, and the main cause is a conflict between the operating system and OEM video drivers.
Right click on an empty space on your desktop and then click on Screen Resolution >Advanced settings. Then switch to the Monitor tab and change Colors to 16-bit.
As the error description explains, this error happens if you have a corrupted or outdated MAPI32.DLL installed on your machine. Usually this happens when you'd installed a newer version of Microsoft Office and then installed an older one.
The entire text of the error message is this: "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."
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