Outlook 2000 in a Nutshell

Troubleshooting

In this section, we are going to look briefly at some common problems you may encounter using Outlook and Exchange. Topics discussed here are client issues that can be typically resolved from Outlook.

Opening a Message in the Outbox is a Bad Idea

Opening a message in the Outbox and closing it again, marks it as “Read.” Outlook, in its infinite wisdom, will not send a Read message from the Outbox. The only solution is to open the message, and click the Send button on the form’s toolbar.

This problem typically rears itself with offline users—most users with an active connect usually do not have enough time to get to the Outbox and open the message before it is spooled to the server.

Corrupt PST files

Corrupt PST files exhibit all sorts of strange behaviors. One of the most common is a failure to send messages. If you’ve exhausted the obvious (no LAN connection, the message has been opened, etc.) try running the Inbox Repair Tool as detailed in Chapter 13. If the problem persists, you can also try:

• Creating a PST and configuring it as the default location for POP mail.

• Creating a new mail profile.

User Profiles

We’ve said it before; we’ll say it again—user profiles are fragile beasts. If you use multiple complex configurations to more than one email account, changing an option in one profile frequently corrupts another. The obvious solution is routine backups of your Outlook configuration (see Chapter 13 for details). However sometimes restoring a backup just to get a profile ...