Say No! to Compatibility Mode

We're starting to see a lot of questions that go something like this: "I have Win 7 on a new PC. I installed MS Office on the new PC but when trying to send emails in Outlook I get a message. "The operation failed. An object could not be found" error message. Receiving email seems to work just fine, only sending is a problem. I tried reinstalling, setting up new profiles, deleting and setting up new accounts etc but nothing seems to work."

Other error messages you may receive include "Cannot open your default email folders. Information store could not be opened". and "Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window. The server is not available. Contact your administrator if this condition persists."

Other problems caused by Compatibility mode include the inability to configure additional email accounts and blank signatures. Users also report that they cannot create new pst files with it enabled. With Compatibility Mode enabled, the Insert file dialog uses the old Explorer window (with a places bar), not the new Windows 7 Explorer with the Favorites and Libraries sections.

This is caused by using compatibility mode in Windows. Users are apparently enabling this when they run the Troubleshoot Compatibility wizard. I'm not sure why users are choosing to run this, it’s not needed for any version of Outlook on Vista or Windows 7 or any other Windows OS.

There is no reason to use compatibility mode with Outlook.

If you enabled compatibility mode, disable it. If you haven’t, don’t even consider enabling it for Outlook.

Outlook is fully compatible on Windows 7, however only Outlook 2003 and newer are supported on it. If you use Outlook 2002 or 2000, enabling compatibility mode will not fix the problems and may make things worse. See Outlook on Vista and Win7? for issues and workarounds for older versions of Outlook on Windows 7 (and Vista).

Change Compatibility Settings

To disable Compatibility mode or confirm its not enabled, find Outlook.exe file and right click, then select Properties.
Click the Compatibility tab in the Properties dialog and uncheck the Compatibility mode box that says "Run this program in Compatibility Mode".

The dialog should like exactly like the screenshot shown here, with all options unchecked.

There are situations where you might want to run Outlook as an administrator but as a rule, this is not necessary except in very limited situations.