Outlook 2007 Known Issues

The following is a list of known issues for Outlook 2007.

General Issues

Outlook 2007 is slow

Outlook 2007 uses your existing account settings to create new ones for you. There are 4 files which contain information about add-ins, views, custom toolbars, and custom forms which may be corrupted in the upgrade process. You can safely delete (or rename) these as Outlook will recreate them without loss of data or settings, with the exception of outcmd.dat. This file holds customized toolbar settings, but since Outlook 2007 uses ribbons, not toolbars, you'll need to redo any customizations anyway.

Extend.dat - this file is located in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Views.dat and Outcmd.dat - these files are located at C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Frmcache.dat - it's at C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Forms

Keep in mind that unless you customized Outlook or installed custom forms, some of these files may not exist. Also, the folders that these files are in are hidden. if you need help viewing them see Where Are My Files?

For more information on the files Outlook uses, see Outlook file locations 

If deleting the files doesn't help, try a new profile.

If you are using a Dell laptop with Media Direct, uninstall the Outlook Setup Addin (Cyberlink). This add-in not only slows Outlook down, but also turns all meeting requests into recurring meeting requests.

Outlook 2007 is so slooooow
Outlook and Slow HTML
Recurring Meeting Bug

You receive blank messages

Disable Outlook integration or email scanning feature of your anti-virus or security program.

Outlook is crashing

Disable add-ins. If you have Adobe Acrobat 6 installed, disable it's add-in first. SnagIt's addin will also crash Outlook. If Outlook crashes when you attempt to disable the addins, you'll need to edit the registry. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins and change the load behavior for Acrobat, SnagIt or other non-Microsoft add-ins to 0.

Sometimes when composing a mail, typing does not insert characters into the body of the message. Clicking the body also does not work.

Click on the To, CC, or Subject line and then click back into the body of the message.

Microsoft Outlook 2007 won't connect to Microsoft Exchange 5.5

The official word is as follows: "Microsoft continuously strives to provide a consistent and predictable end-of-life-cycle experience for all of its products. In accordance with standard Microsoft life-cycle policies Exchange 5.5 ended extended life-cycle support on January 10th, 2006. As a result, Outlook 2007 will not support Exchange 5.5. Because neither the Outlook or Exchange team is supporting this combination we will not discover and/or fix issues that crop up as the result of innovations in both products . Rather than subjecting customers to potential serious issues like data loss or frequent server downtime we choose to prevent Outlook from connecting to these older and now unsupported servers. Our research has shown that there is a relatively small set of customers who want to upgrade their desktops to the latest and greatest versions of Office and run server technology as old as Exchange 5.5. There are clearly exceptions but they don't seem to be the norm."

RSS Issues

When deleting an RSS feed on one machine while multiple Outlook clients are running against the same store, the entry in the Account Manager for the feed does not get removed.

If you delete an RSS feed's folder from one machine, the folder's deletion will roam to all of your other clients. The entry in the Account Manager for that feed will remain on all of the other machines until you reboot them.

When adding RSS feeds through the Account Manager it doesn't work.

The first time you add an RSS feed through the Account Manager it will not get added correctly. Once you close and re-open the Account Manager, all subsequent feeds will get added correctly.

Search Issues

"Outlook has worked closely with the MS Search team to develop a version of our Instant Search functionality that leverages the new Windows Desktop Search 3.0 platform. These changes have required a significant investment in converting the underlying architectures of the Outlook application and as such have introduced changes into the end-user experience, specifically around configuring the new Outlook 2007 application and the need to install Windows Desktop Search 3.0.

Windows Desktop Search (WDS) 3.0 is a native component of Vista, and is being shipped separately as a system component through Windows Update for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 users. WDS is a system service that indexes file, email and other content in order to provide fast searches over content and properties. It is an upgrade to all previous 2.x versions of Windows Desktop Search you may currently use.

We will be shipping Outlook 2007 with a new version of Instant Search technology that is built on top of WDS and is dependent on its presence for search to work. B1TR included a native Office indexing component. In order to provide a consistent search experience across the Windows Explorer, Office applications and any others utilizing Windows Desktops Search, and to optimize system resources, we have decided to build on a single, unified indexing component for Windows. The result of this work will be in Outlook 2007 Beta 2, and therefore require installation of WDS 3.0 at boot time."

Where did the MSN Toolbar and/or LookOut toolbar go?

Windows Desktop Search 3.0 disables the MSN Toolbar and LookOut in Outlook. LookOut and the MSN Toolbar are now considered to be old versions of Microsoft products. To offer users the clearest and most integrated search experience for Outlook 2007, Outlook disables these add-ins when Outlook starts.

If you delete or move an item from a list of search results, nothing happens.

When you are viewing the results of a query, if you delete or move an item it will not be updated in those results, but it WILL be deleted or moved as intended (in the background).

To see the updated list, enter your search again.

Windows Desktop Search has been installed for a few hours already and mail is still not indexed, so searching in Outlook 2007 does not show any or all of the results.

Microsoft uses "back-off logic" that prevents the system from indexing (and slowing your machine down) when you are actively using it. If you leave your machine alone for more than a few minutes it will continue to index.

For best results when indexing a store, leave Outlook running unattended overnight to fully index your store.

While Windows Desktop Search is indexing your data it displays an error such as this:

The instruction '0x03f7f516' referenced memory at "0x0xxxxxx". The memory could not be read. Click OK to terminate the program.

This is a crashing issue with the Adobe PDF iFilter component (which indexes PDF files).

You need to disable the PDF iFilter and then restart the Search service:

1. Go to Add/Remove Programs, and uninstall the ‘Adobe PDF IFilter 6.0.’
2. From a command prompt, type net stop wsearch then net start wsearch to restart the Search service.

See http://www.slipstick.com/emo/2006/up060525.htm#search for more on search.

Calendar Issues

When I print my calendar, recurring appointments that extend into the next week don't print correctly. They extend into the margin instead of wrapping to next week.

This is a know issue that is fixed in SP1, due out in late 2007. Use the calendar printing assistant. See Calendar Printing Tools for Outlook for links to this and other printing tools. 

Will e-mail addresses included in the CC or BCC fields of sharing messages for restricted calendars get access to the published calendar?

When composing a sharing message for a calendar published with restricted access, e-mail addresses in CC or BCC fields do indeed get access to the calendar.

When adding an Internet Calendar Subscription through the Account Manager it does not work.

The first time you add an Internet Calendar Subscription through the Account Manager, it does not work. Closing and reopening Account Manager should enable all further subscriptions.

Publishing a calendar results in the loss of some copy/paste and drag-and-drop functionality for that calendar.

Publishing a calendar to the Internet currently causes appointment copy/paste and drag-and-drop functionality to stop working on that calendar.

To work around this issue, open up the appointment details and change the settings through that dialog rather than via drag and drop, or copy/paste operations.

Outlook is unable to subscribe to Internet Calendars when a webcal link that contains international characters is clicked in Internet Explorer.

The calendar can be manually subscribed in Outlook by copying the Internet Calendar address and creating the subscription through the Internet Calendars tab, located under Account Settings on the Tools menu.

To-do Bar & Tasks Issues

Outlook Connector Issues

Search fails to find items in the Outlook Connector mailbox

There is a known bug where Instant Search does not work for Microsoft Office Outlook Connector mailboxes. There is a workaround to enable legacy search for these mailboxes:

Go to Tools, Options menu then choose Search Options. In the Indexing list, remove the check for the Outlook connector mailboxes.

Outlook fails to load because of errors with “msncon32.dll” or “msncon.dll”.

Download the latest version from http://g.msn.com/0CR1033/3

Administrator Issues

Can't run PRF files to create a new profile

As a security measure, PRF's can only be imported using the /importPRF switch. See http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/commandlines.htm for help using switches.

Developer Issues

Known issues with Outlook extensibility include the following:

1. Collaboration Data Objects 1.21 (CDO) is not available through Office Setup. CDO is only be available as a Web download in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007.
2. Attempting to theme Outlook by providing a manifest for Outlook.exe may cause Outlook to hang. This is because Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 automatically provides visual styles (also known as Windows XP themes) for custom user interfaces such as property pages. If your property page was built with Windows common controls, certain controls may not display correctly. Check boxes or option buttons inside of a frame control must be placed inside a picture box control.

Outlook crashes if you tab into or out of a custom form with a message body in the Reading Pane.

Use the mouse to click into and out of the Reading Pane.

Labels on form regions may have a gray background.

Some form region customizations may render with a gray background behind label controls. You can work around this issue by resizing the form slightly at runtime, which will cause the labels to paint correctly.