Those handy little vCard files that make it easy to send phone and address information to all your friends and associates can also deliver an unpleasant payload. Outlook does not abide by the Internet RFC (Request for Comment) that defines the vCard format. If you open a vCard that contains too much information in one of several fields, Outlook will crash. Fortunately, the problem does not harm your data. File this one under minor, if potentially very annoying bugs.
According to the Dr. Watson log, the program that has the problem is actually Msimn.exe, the executable for Outlook Express, which shares many components with Outlook 98 and 2000, particularly for Internet-related functions. The problem definitely affects Outlook 2000, but might affect earlier versions as well.
A vCard file is just a text file with a specific layout of fields, delimiters and data, saved with a .vcf file extension. If you want to avoid the problem completely, you can change the default file type association for vCard .vcf files so that they open in Notepad instead of Outlook. (If this sounds familiar, it's because many people changed the file type association for .vbs VBScript files to Notepad after the VBS//Loveletter virus scare.) After you open the vCard in Notepad, you can copy and paste the information into an Outlook contact, field by field.
More Information
- OL2000: How to Use vCard in Outlook
- OL98: How to Use vCard in Outlook
- OL97: Outlook Support for vCards
good morning Diane, hope all is well. I have a situation where when I hover over 1 particular person, the contact card shows up and as I move my mouse away outlook freezes. this happens on 1 contact only. I created a new outlook profile, same result. I had him log in to another machine, same result. i'll appreciate any assistance you can provide
it sounds like the contact is somehow corrupted and it's affecting this contact card. Have you tried deleting and creating the contact? It might be enough to save it as a vcard to the hard drive, delete it from outlook then open the vcard and save to get it back into outlook.