Fix Microsoft Outlook has encountered a problem error

Posted on September 29, 2008 at 5:45 am

One of Microsoft’s favorite error messages is “Program X has encountered a problem and needs to close”. You’ll get this message from pretty much any Microsoft product, including Microsoft Office, Windows, and Internet Explorer. Previously I wrote about a way to fix Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close error.

In this article, I will go through several ways you can try to fix this same error for Microsoft Outlook! It may look something like this:

AppName: outlook.exe AppVer: 11.0.8010.0 AppStamp:232039e
ModName: msmapi32.dll ModVer: 11.0.8002.0 ModStamp:32949d2

Microsoft outlook has encountered a problem.

These errors, unfortunately, are not easily fixed because there are multiple problems that can give the same error message! So you may see this error in Outlook only when you close the program or you may see it every time you try to check for new mail.

Each of these has be be resolved in a different way! So in this post, I will list out all the possible ways that I know of that you can fix this annoying “Outlook has encountered a problem” error and hopefully one of them works for you.

Method 1 – Install Windows and Office updates

I’m going to start off with the easier tips before going into more technical solutions. Go ahead and install all the latest Windows updates and the latest Office updates. If you have Outlook with Business Contact Manager, make sure to install the service packs for that also. This probably won’t solve your issue, but it’s worth a shot.

Method 2 – Delete and recreate email account

Sometimes this error may be related to the actual email account setup in Outlook. You can try to delete the email account by going to Tools and then Email Accounts or Account Settings.

Click on the email account and then choose Remove or Delete.

Go ahead and recreate the email account and see if that resolves your issue.

Method 3 – Start Outlook without add-ons

Your problem may also be caused if you recently installed an Outlook add-on, so try to remember if you installed anything recently that would have installed an add-in to Outlook. For example, if you install Adobe Professional, it tries to install a PDF add-on to all Office programs.

If you install some kind of Outlook connector add-on, uninstall that and see if the problem goes away. Installing an anti-virus program such as AVG, etc may also install an add-on to Outlook. Other add-ons like spam filters (Cloudmark, etc) may also be causing the issue.

You can quickly tell if an add-on is causing the problem by starting Outlook without any add-ons. Basically, you are starting Outlook in Safe Mode.

Go to Start, then Run, and type in the following command in the Open box:

outlook /safe

If your problem goes away, then you know it’s one of the add-ons. In Outlook 2007, you can enable or disable add-ins by going to Tools, Trust Center and then clicking on Add-ins.

In Outlook 2003, you can disable add-ins by going to Tools, Options, clicking on the Other tab, clicking on Advanced Options, and then clicking on Add-In Manager.

Method 4 – Uninstall any new software

You can also get this error in Outlook by installing some other third party software on your computer. For example, if you recently installed a new toolbar for IE, uninstall it. If you recently updated to a new version of IE, try to revert back to an older version. Sometimes other programs not related to Outlook can cause this error to appear!

Method 5 – Find the corrupt email and delete it

This may sound weird, but one particular email can actually crash the entire Outlook program! Oddly, I have seen this happen before. When you try to read one specific email in your Inbox, all of a sudden Outlook will crash and close without a notice.

You will have to go through your email and try to find the email or emails that cause Outlook to crash. Though this is very rare, it has happened and can be very frustrating to figure out. My suggestion would be to simply click on the first email and just arrow down through emails slowly until you reach the corrupt one.

Method 6 – Replace msmapi32.dll with an older version

Some people have sworn that by replacing this file with a different version, their problem has gone away. However, this is a bit more complicated as their are many versions of this file around and you have to figure out which one will actually work. It’s best to simply copy the one you have currently to a different location and then try out various versions of this file.

You’ll have to do a search on Google for msmapi32.dll to actually find and download the files, but this may work for some people.

Method 7 – Delete or rename auto-complete data file

You can also try to delete the auto-complete history file as that sometimes gets corrupt and can cause this error. First, make sure you can see hidden files and folders by going to Windows Explorer and clicking on Tools, Options, clicking on the View tab and choosing Show Hidden Files and Folders.

Now navigate to the following directory:

C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Now find the file with a .NK2 extension and either rename the extension to something else or simply delete the file. Outlook will automatically recreate it and hopefully the new version will be error free.

And that’s about it! If your problem still persists, you can always try to completely uninstall Outlook and reinstall it and see if that works. Other than that though, one of the above methods should fix your Outlook error! If not, post a comment and I’ll try to help! Enjoy!

» Filed Under MS Office Tips

Comments

17 Responses to “Fix Microsoft Outlook has encountered a problem error”

J Mody said on : November 13th, 2008 at 1:10 pm

I can’t even get outlook /safe to work. I get the same error “Microsoft has encountered a problem….”. It is in a loop; I tried creating a new data file, same issue. It might be a bad email but how do I find it?
Is there a way to repair the pst file?

F Passman said on : January 19th, 2009 at 1:17 pm

i’m having the same problem.

Does anybody have a fix to this???

2ideas said on : January 22nd, 2009 at 3:49 am

you can easily repair your pst file by using scanpst.exe which you can find in your ms office directory. it is important unmap the pst-file before you start, to ensure that it is not used by outlook.

catpur said on : March 6th, 2009 at 2:50 pm

Installing Office service pack 3 fixed this for me.

Saji said on : April 20th, 2009 at 2:27 am

I have the same problem of “outlook encountered a problem and need to be closed” in my Outlook 2007 while i start a new mail or when i click on the reply button. It occures only in normal mode. In safe mode it is working fine… can you help me?

Karon Phillips said on : May 12th, 2009 at 5:36 am

I have the same problem – but I can work with webmail. I tried to go to the ‘trust’ part, but as soon as I click on that, I get the error message again. I tried turning off the local version, but still got the problem when I was working directly off the exchange server version.

Any ideas?

Greg Roberts said on : May 26th, 2009 at 10:28 pm

This will fix the issue:

Open Outlook – go to Tools -> Account Settings -. highlight aan email account -> Click “data files” and then delete any data files that you do not require. You will see Outlook.pst and archive.pst…. If you see anything else, then this is file is likely causing the issue. A typical file that you may see here is a Winfax file if you have installed Winfax. Hope this helps.

Cris Lombardi said on : June 18th, 2009 at 7:14 pm

Thanks!

Finally I managed to solve the problem I had with my previous anti-virus add-on that insisted on appearing in Outlook.

chris g said on : July 1st, 2009 at 10:06 pm

finally fix the outlook “error” “circle”

i deleted all the files in the following directory
C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

and it worked start away

thanks for the “lead to my idea”

Jon said on : July 10th, 2009 at 6:23 pm

I have Outlook 2003 and it was giving me the error message “….encountered a problem…..” every time I tried to delete an email or move one to a different folder. And each time it closed it would check the app for a problem, which would take about 4 minutes. Your Method 2 worked like a charm. After deleting and recreating the email account the problem went away. Thanks so much for the tip.

DP said on : September 24th, 2009 at 3:41 am

I have Outlook 2007. I started receiving this message after an unexpected power cut. Tried all steps but the one that worked for me was provided by Chris G in the comments. Delete all files in the C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook folder. (Make a copy first so you can restore if needed). Thanks to all for the help, was dreading a format/reinstall!

Christina said on : September 24th, 2009 at 11:23 am

I have Outlook 2007 and error message “Business Contact Manager has encountered a problem and needs to close”. I open Outlook and this message appears then Outlook closes, this happens over and over. Please help!!

Raphael Gonçalves said on : November 30th, 2009 at 9:40 am

Exactly what I’ve been looking for, thanks for your help! My Outlook is no longer crashing!

Oshie said on : December 2nd, 2009 at 1:32 am

How do you unmap a PST file?

Oshie said on : December 2nd, 2009 at 1:34 am

If you receive e-mails from different accounts and you want to set one as your default for sending how do you do it.

Hooray said on : January 22nd, 2010 at 4:57 pm

Thanks for your help! I’ve been getting these Outlook encountered a problem errors for a while now and method 3 solved it for me. Looks like I had installed an add-on that was not going well with Outlook. Removed that and no more error.

Ney said on : January 27th, 2010 at 2:48 pm

Hi, hope you can help me. I turned off the laptop by clicking “shutdown” and must have corrupted some file …I try to open outlook and the following message appears: “Unable to start the Microsof Office Outlook. Could not open the window Outlook, Could not open the folder X. Errors were identified in the file D:\…outlook.pst. Close Outlook and all mail-enabled applications and use the repair tool inbox (scanpst.exe) to diagnose and repair errors in the file.