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General discussion

Office Outlook shuts down

Dec 31, 2009 1:15AM PST

I am using Office 2000, which is no longer supported by Microsoft. I keep getting the rather annoying message " Outlook has encountered a problem and has to close". I can restart the program immediately and it runs again for 15 minutes or so - the times are irregular. I have used the 'Repair' facility under Help but it has not made any difference. If I send an Error Report, I only get the offer of a free trial of Office 2007. I am using XP Professional with an Avast virus scanner. Any help would be appreciated.

Discussion is locked

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Possibly an Outlook Add-in?
Dec 31, 2009 4:47AM PST

If Outlook has any add-ins installed, try disabling them. That includes an Avast email scanner add-in if there is one.

Outlook > Tools > Options > Other tab > Advanced Options button

But if the problem is the Avast email scanner you will need to take extra care with incoming and outgoing emails, as they will not be scanned.

Mark

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Possibly an Outlook add-in
Jan 2, 2010 7:28PM PST

Thanks Mark - your suggestion works but I am concerned about incoming emails not being scanned. I have raised the query with Avast to see if they have any suggestions about preventing the shut-down problem but still keeping scanning. If they don't I may revert to AVG. Thanks for your help.
Roger

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Well, I'm glad it worked
Jan 2, 2010 9:01PM PST

but like you I would be concerned about the lack of email protection, especially for incoming emails.

I'm surprised. I am sure that Avast's email scanning component is a standard feature of their anti-virus, and I have not heard of problems with it before.

You may want to head over to these forum's Spyware, viruses and security forum and see if they can help. You can mention this discussion if you like and include a link to your first post, (right click the "Permalink" option and copy/paste the link).

But the other options you could consider are;

1] "Repair" Outlook. Help > Detect and Repair, but this may need an Office CD. Also, I would backup all emails and contact lists before doing anything, just in case.
More on that here; http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291957
Allow that add-on to be used again.

2] Uninstall Avast, (they may have a 'removal tool' on their web site). Reboot the computer, then reinstall and allow the add-on to be installed.

Good luck with whatever you choose.

Mark

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Outlook 2003 crashing problem
May 20, 2010 12:22PM PDT

I am using Windows 7 and running Outlook 2003 on my fairly new Dell desktop. I keep getting the rather annoying message 'Outlook has encountered a problem and has to close'. I can restart the program immediately and it runs again for a few minutes then gives me the same message, and closes.

A forum fellow (Kees) suggested that I switch to safe mode and try running Outlook 2003, and said that if it runs fine (which it does), I may have a corrupted file. If someone could/would please advise me on how to resolve this corrupted file situation, I would very much appreciate it.

Thanks so much, Joe

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Re: Outlook
May 20, 2010 7:48PM PDT

If Outlook crashes or misbehaves in another way, the most likely causes are:
1. Some add-in. See post above from Mark on how to manage those.
2. A bad data or settings file. Those are all user specific. So switching to a new Windows account helps in such cases (if only for diagnostic purposes).

Outlook out of the box, without add-ons in a virgin Windows account, hardly ever gives problems.

Kees