Though mainly used as an email client, Microsoft Outlook allows you to maintain calendar information and keep task reminders as well. Consequently, you can display reminder information at calendar’s top as an event or in the calendar itself. At times, you find certain issues with these Outlook items. As expected, Outlook task reminders and calendar fail to appear at scheduled time. One of the root causes responsible for this behavior is that your Personal Storage file contains damaged reminder items or the complete reminder folder is corrupted. PST corruption should be resolved by running Inbox Repair Tool or restoring from the backup. If none of the measures work, you should better scan your file by using PST Recovery applications.

For an instance, besides from unexpected and unscheduled behavior of Outlook calendar and task reminders, when you click ‘Save and Close’ button for new appointment that has a reminder, you come across an error message as below:

“The reminder for <subject> may not appear because the item is not in your Calendar or Tasks folder. Is this OK? <yes> <no>”

Cause

Microsoft Outlook processes and triggers reminders from a special-purposed folder known as Reminder Folder that is stored in either personal folder or Inbox of mailbox . The folder is kind of search folder containing links to those messages which meet certain criteria. For reminders to trigger, it is required that Outlook must be running and reminders should reside at the location where you receive all your emails. Outlook exhibits the above discussed behavior in any of the following conditions:

• The calendar and task reminders your specified are not in primary folders, as expected by the application. Primary folder is the one that resides at your mail delivery point. As an illustration, while setting up your email service, you designated PST Inbox as the location where you should receive your emails. But when you created a reminder, you stored it in some other folder instead of PST Calendar. In similar conditions, when you haven’t specified your reminders in primary folder, Outlook will fail to display at the scheduled time.

• Outlook doesn’t maintain separate file for handling reminders as other applications do. So if Outlook is not running, reminders will fail to display and trigger.

• For Outlook reminders to be processed by the application, it is must that you have specified a location where your emails could be delivered by default. The above error could occur if while setting up your email service, you haven’t specified the ‘Delivery’ option to any valid value but to ‘none’.

• Outlook is trying to access reminders from a corrupted reminders folder. It might also occur due to some corrupt entries in the folders. If PST is your mail delivery location, such errors could result due to corruption of the file.

Solution

Below are the methods that you should apply to solve these problems. In case when the reminders or whole PST is damaged, you need to either delete the reminders or run Inbox Repair Tool if PST corruption is the issue. PST Recovery can also be achieved by using commercial applications if Inbox Repair Tool fails. You can apply these measures to correct the existing issue:

• Make sure that when you create reminders, you are saving them in the primary folder.

• Start Outlook if it is not running

• You can delete all the existing reminders by running /cleanreminders switch. To do so, you need to exit the application and click Start->Run and type outlook /cleanreminders.

• If this doesn’t help, you should try a different switch to reset all the folders as outlook /resetfolders

• Try running Inbox Repair Tool to correct PST file corruption problems.

• If a clean backup is available and Inbox Repair Tool doesn’t work, delete the damaged file and restore from backup

• For effective and safe PST Repair, scan the file using third-party tools. Designed to run powerful repair algorithms and embedded with rich graphical features, PST Recovery software serve as advanced tools to repair and restore a damaged PST file crashed due to logical reasons.

Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Repair is the world’s trusted product that repairs and recover PST file. The software supports non-destructive PST Repair for Outlook 2007, 2003, 2002 and 2000. It recovers all email items and other Outlook items, such as calendar entries, journals, notes, tasks, appointments etc. This safe PST file Recovery application is compatible with Windows Vista, XP, 2003, 2000 and NT. The software is also competent to recover lost PST password and split a PST file.

As an instance, when you try to start Microsoft Outlook 2000, you might fail to do so and encounter the below error message on screen:

“DDE server window: outlook.exe-no disk. There is no disk in the drive.”

As an additional symptom, you might find that all the email messages that you had before installing Microsoft Office 2000 Service Release 1 are missing from your account.

Cause

You might experience the above symptoms if any of the below conditions exists:

Microsoft Outlook uses few log files to store journal information. Offitems.log is the file that contains information about files that you created, opened, saved or closed while Outlook was not running. Outitems.log is responsible for holding information about Outlook items, such as email message, tasks, appointments, notes and others. These binary file are extremely important for Outlook automatic journaling feature. The above error might result if these (Offitems.log and Outitems.log) journal log files are damaged.

Windows includes a file called Msvcrt.dll that is responsible for providing few basic services to Visual C++ compiled applications, like Microsoft Office Outlook. The services provided are memory allocation, comparing strings etc. Outlook might prompt the above error if Msvcrt.dll file is damaged or exists in incorrect version.

Outlook Personal Folder (.pst file) is damaged. PST is the single file storing all email messages, notes, tasks, appointments, journals and other Outlook items. It might get corrupted due to unexpected shutdown, file size limitation (in Outlook 97-2002), application errors and other similar causes.
PST is located on a removable media, which is not available now.

Solution

To fix the ‘DDE Error’, you can use these methods:

1.Rename the damaged Outlook journal log files. The next time when you will start Outlook, it will recreate these files. To do so, search for Outitems.log and Offitems.log files and rename them to Outitems.old and Offitems.old correspondingly. Restart Outlook after you perform this task.

2.Verify the version of Msvcrt.dll file. If you find the file in incorrect version, you should replace the file from a suitable system.

3.Check if the media, on which the PST file is located, is connected to the system. If this is not so, you should try to access the file after connecting the media to the system.

4.You are recommended to install the latest Windows Service Pack available.

5.Perform PST Repair for the damaged personal folder. To do so, you should run Inbox Repair Tool (scanpst.exe) to fix the corruption issues. You need to locate the tool and specify the file path, which will repair the damaged file. However, you can try to workaround the file damage issues by creating a new PST file and importing all the folders and subfolders from the affected PST file. Before doing so, it is suggested that you backup the .pst file. After this, you can run outlook.exe /cleanpst and open Outlook that will provide you an option to create a new .pst file. You can then use Import and Export option of File menu to import all Outlook data from the damaged PST file. If this doesn’t help and also Inbox Repair Tool cannot repair the damaged file, you should use PST Recovery applications.

PST Recovery tools use powerful scanning algorithms to scan and repair a damaged PST file. Such utilities provide interactive user interface, explicit user-friendly features and comprehensive PST Recovery results.

Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Repair is an advanced and the most powerful PST Recovery Tool for damaged PST file. The tool supports safe recover PST for files created with Outlook 2007, 2003, 2002 and 2000. It is fully-competent and read-only application that repairs and restores damaged .pst file in all file corruption scenarios. The software is compatible with Windows Vista, XP, 2003, 2000 and NT. Using the software, you can also recover a lost PST password and split a large PST file into several smaller PST files.

There can be a wide variety of reasons causing Outlook 2007 to crash. Some of them are listed below:

• Outdated Outlook installation

• Add-ins or extensions issues

• Problematic Outlook profile

• Corrupted Outlook installation

• Damaged Outlook data file (PST)

• Damaged Windows profile

• System specific problems

Solution

To fix Outlook 2007 crashing issues, you should consider these methods:

• You need to ensure if the crash occurs when you perform a particular task, for example while opening a particular email message or meeting on calendar. If this is the case, you can perform steps like deleting the specific item or doing a similar task as per the cause.

• You can try updating Outlook installation with the latest cumulative updates available

• Microsoft Outlook provides different command-line switches that allow you to start Outlook after cleaning few application settings. Based on the specific problem in existence, you can use these switches to troubleshoot. For example, if crash occurs when reminders are fired, you can use /cleanreminders switch to clean and regenerate them. Whereas, if issue is related to invalid profile keys, you can use /cleanprofile switch.

• Outlook installation might be damaged. So, you can try reinstalling Microsoft Outlook 2007.

• Starting Outlook using /safe mode allows you to start it without loading many of the customizations, Exchange Client Extensions, reading pane, customized toolbars, and COM add-ins, Form regions, macros etc. So, you can use it to start Outlook. If you find that Outlook doesn’t crash when you start it in /safe mode, you need to check the list of disabled items to see if any of them relate to the type of kind of crash you suffer. If this is the case, you can disable, remove or rename the item, as per the case.

• To check if the issue is Outlook profile specific, you can create a test profile containing no email accounts. Since it doesn’t have any email account, it will not send and receive any email messages. You can try adding the existing PST file to see if PST is not damaged. It will create a PIM profile. If it doesn’t crashes, you should continue working with this new profile.

• You can try to test the new Outlook profile with your email accounts as all the times, Outlook profile might not be the issue.

• If Outlook crashes after adding PST, the file might be damaged. Thus, you need to repair it using Inbox Repair Tool or alternatively by using commercial PST Repair tools.

• If Outlook crashes after trying a new profile, you should try creating and using a new Windows profile. If problem gets solved, you should keep continuing work with this new profile and delete the earlier one.

• If testing through new Windows profile doesn’t help, the issue could be machine-related. It could occur due to problems like faulty RAM, damaged files, wrong data in HKEY_Local_Machine hive, incompatible software or faulty Windows. So to check this behavior, you can perform steps like using Outlook on a different system, checking Office installation, performing Windows clean boot, replacing the corrupted RAM and other similar steps.

About PST Recovery Tools

PST file recovery tools are the commercial applications that are specifically designed to scan a damaged PST file. Built with indigenous technology to repair the file, these PST Recovery software encompass graphically rich user interface, advanced file repair options, read-only design and more. You can make use of these PST Recovery products in any case when you observe your PST file as damaged.

Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Repair is the finest PST Recovery application with support to Outlook 2007, 2003, 2002 and 2000. It restores all PST file objects (like emails, notes, journals, tasks, appointments etc.) and provides advanced PST Recovery functionalities. It is compatible with Windows Vista, XP, 2003, 2000 and NT. It also provides PST Password Recovery and Split PST features.

Consider a practical scenario, you upgrade to Outlook 2007 from an earlier Outlook version (for example, Outlook 2003). After this, when you try to open Microsoft Outlook, it fails giving the below error message:

“Borland database engine not installed. Can’t load Corel address book service provider”
Microsoft Outlook crashes after this error message. You may receive this error even if you are not using the mentioned service.

Cause

Probable causes of the above error message to occur are:

1. Coral address book issues
2. Incomplete upgrade
3. PST is damaged or corrupted due to application errors, virus attack like problems

Solution

To correct such problems, follow these steps:

1. You need to detect and troubleshoot coral address book problems
2. If incomplete upgrade is the issue, uninstall Microsoft Outlook and install it again
3. If PST corruption is the issue, make use of Inbox Repair Tool (scanpst.exe) to scan and repair your damaged PST file.

Inbox Repair is the built-in utility of Microsoft Outlook that repairs PST file, damaged due to internal reasons like application issues, disk errors etc. It can’t repair when external causes corrupt PST file. Thus, in case it fails to repair damaged PST, you can use third party PST Recovery applications.

PST Recovery Software are complete products to analyze a damaged PST file. These are read-only tools built with indigenous technology to safely repair and restore damaged PST file. Such applications provide quality features, which include easy comprehending steps, read only design, precise and explained documentation and powerful PST Recovery abilities.

Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Repair is complete products that Recover PST files. It supports repair for Outlook 2007, 2003, 2002, and 2000. This read-only PST Repair tool restores all email messages, notes, journals, tasks, and other Outlook objects. The software is compatible with Windows Vista, XP, 2003, 2000 and NT.