Outlook freezes accessing global Contacts

[Myke 0]

A client using Outlook 2007 is experiencing freezing issues when accessing the domain's global contact list. Personal contacts are not a problem when accessed outside of a new email.

 

When the user starts a new email and clicks either the To... box or the Address Book button on the ribbon, Outlook freezes up. Nothing can be selected in Outlook and the title bar does not display "Not Responding." It just sits there and cannot be moved. The only way to get rid of the window is to close down Outlook in the Task Manager.

 

This is user specific on the affected machine. Any other user logged into that machine does not have this happen. If the user in question is logged into another machine, the issue is not present. I have completely uninstalled Office, removed the directory C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook, rebooted the machine, then reinstalled Office from scratch, but to no avail. CRM client for Outlook has been removed to cross that out.

 

This is a bit of a tricky issue to search for on Microsoft's support site, as well as the rest of the Internet. Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated.

 

System is running Office 2007 upgrade from Office XP (2002). OS is XP SP2 (we are not upgrading to SP3 due to issues regarding CRM, Dynamics, and possible database data loss, as described by Microsoft; waiting for them to release a patch). Client is in a Microsoft AD domain running Exchange 2003, but I believe this to be solely client side.

 

If you require additional information, let me know and I'll gladly give you what I can. Thanks in advance.

[Myke 0]

I've been working on this machine for hours without any progress. System Restores only cause more issues, but at least I can cross that off my list. I ran Office Diagnostics, but it said nothing was detected as an issue.

 

Upon opening up Outlook and attempting to create a new message, the same problem happened when clicking the To... box. This time, I had the volume turned on and heard low-tuned dings when clicking on the Outlook windows. Minimizing won't be allowed, but opening up another window (say, IE) and minimizing it doesn't affect the display of the Outlook windows, which shows that Outlook isn't really frozen. Thinking that maybe there is a dialogue box open that I just couldn't see (alt + tab did nothing), I hit Alt + F4 and Outlook started responding again. Clicking the To... box brought up the global contacts.

 

I have no idea what happened or why it started, but it looks like it's functioning normally again. I still would very much like to know what did this to the machine. If I find anything, I'll keep you all posted.

[Pianodog 0]

As a footnote to this topic, I have a user with Office 2003 Small Business Edition, and he had the exact same issue. Every time he clicked "To..." or "CC..." his mouse cursor would jump to the top-left corner of the screen, and Outlook would freeze and stop responding but not say "Not Responding". It also produced a low-toned 'bung' noise every time you clicked on any email or the app. When closing the task, I did note that "Select Names" was running as an app, but couldn't be forced to close without closing Outlook at the same time.

 

Thankfully, I found this post and Alt+F4 fixed the problem instantly.

 

I registered for the site to thank you for your post and updates. You likely saved me hours of frustration.

[Techtiger4 0]

You may need to repair Outlook.pst file

[Jimbo40 0]

You have to repair your Outlook.pst file.

Sometime it shows up as the envolope in the task manager saying outlook is synchonizeing folders and won't leave for 10-15 min. meanwhile cursor is the only thing that moves. keystrokes don't respond, even task manager is really slow to respond if it does at all. hard drive stay on all the while it is doing this. Or it will not close until it is done doing whatever it is doing.

Then when it is finished, all the keystroke you made during the problem, proceed as normal, except by this time your more frustrated then a wet hen.

THE OUTLOOK.PST file has errors that need to be fixed with a progam you already have! OUTLOOK is fine, thats why the diagnosis comes back good and thats why an uninstall and reinstall don't help because the problem is not with outlook.

First you should run an error checking program like chkdsk

on your C drive properties error checking.

Then find C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\SCANPST.

Then find your outlook.pst files

It will find errors even afters running a few time. run it as many times as it takes until there are no more error, on all outlook.pst files

Go back to outlook and enjoy the program that use to work fine and does once again.

Don't bother to thank me for the fix.

Jim

[DosFreak 2]

Thread closed