Microsoft Outlook has ...... failed!

July 24, 2017 1:32 PM

Outlook 13 has handled our email with little drama until last Friday. It started hanging up on the syncing steps in Send/Receive. Summary of my futile steps to remediate inside.

When Outlook opens, it executes Send/Receive, part of which is a syncing function. My problem is that it is stalling with message saying "syncing". Task Manager suggests than nothing is happening. (0% CPU activity)

Things I have tried: 1) using the "change" option to check the account settings, which are OK. Fails on the connectivity test. 2) Setting up a new profile and adding the account. Fails on the connectivity test. 3) Spent an hour or so with support from the ISP doing the above again, plus more. All fails on the connectivity step. He says try Microsoft Support. 4) Tried Quick Repair and Complete Repair from Uninstall Programs screen - no effect. 4) Turned off Kapersky anti-virus - no effect.

No matter what I do, the program doesn't connect with the ISP. The account sends and receives properly on this computer using the browser client, and on my tablet using Outlook for Android.

If I thought it would fix the problem, I'd spring for the newest version of Outlook (2016), but why should I think that would work. OTOH, maybe MS support would be able to help. My suspicions are on Kapersky, and I might completely uninstall it. Or maybe I need to run a different virus detector.

I'm at a loss. Any suggestions?

posted by SemiSalt to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Sounds like the PST is broken or too big. In Outlook, go to File > Account Settings > Account Settings, go to the Data Files tab, select the Data File, and go to the Open File Location.

In that folder, right click the Data File, go to Properties, and reply back with the size.

Also, go to Start > Computer > C: > Program Files (x86) > Microsoft Office > Office15 (I think it's 15, could be another number there), and find ScanPST. Double click that, make sure that it's pointed to the file you found above, and scan that file, and let it repair. Close Outlook before starting that scan too.
posted by deezil at 2:33 PM on July 24, 2017

Before you do anything else, back up the .pst file deezil refers to.
posted by theora55 at 4:18 PM on July 24, 2017

Response by poster: I think it's fixed. I was looking through the entries at Control Panel/User Accounts/Mail (Outlook 2013) and got into a loop with an error box that wouldn't go away. I tried to restart and that hung up, so I powered it down. When I powered up again, Outlook worked fine.

I think the cause was a rogue process that got killed by the user-induced crash, but that's just a guess. I'm going to take the advice to save the .pst file.

Thanks for your help.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:48 PM on July 24, 2017

We are having the same problems. It's also not indexing stuff properly so the search isn't working. I want to murder it.
posted by fshgrl at 6:51 PM on July 24, 2017

fshgrl, the ScanPST steps may work for you as well. It does include a backup step as part of its fixing, make sure to do that.

For both of you, there's also the compact function that may help the file run better.

File > Account Settings > Account Settings, go to the Data Files tab, select the Data File, go to Settings > Advanced > Compact Now
posted by deezil at 5:25 AM on July 25, 2017