Ever seen the error message "Microsoft Outlook didn't close properly"? Don't panic!

Ever seen the error message “Microsoft Outlook didn’t close properly”? Don’t panic!

Ever tried to open Microsoft Outlook for the day and seen a message saying “Microsoft Outlook didn’t close properly”?

Don’t panic!

When you close Outlook, it takes time to close all its connections to the email server and sometimes freezes. If you got tired of waiting and used Task Manager to force Outlook to close or Outlook closed unexpectedly in some other way, Outlook’s offline file (OST) or personal file (PST) could have been damaged. This is what causes the error to come up when you open Outlook again and it will prompt you to run a check on the files to fix the issue.

Most of the time, this automatic check works but sometimes it doesn’t work. If you still get the error message and have trouble opening Outlook, here are some tips to resolve the issue:

First, you may need to show hidden files. In Windows Explorer, click Organize in the top left, then > Folder and Search Options > View tab and select Show hidden files, folders, and drives.

Step 1- If the damaged file is an OST and you’re in the office, you can simply rename the file and Outlook will rebuild it. In Windows 7, the files can be in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Local

Step 2- Use Windows Explorer to search your machine for an executable file called “scanpst.exe”. This file can scan PST and OST files and fix any errors with them. For Outlook 2007, you can find it in C:\Program files\Microsoft Office\Office12. Open the file and let it run. Please be patient and let the process finish - though it shows 8 phases, it goes through only 4 before displaying the results. If there are any errors, opt not to save a copy of the file (to save time) and click repair. Depending on the size of the file, this can take from 1 minute to an hour or more.

If the size of the OST or PST file is large, I strongly recommend to archive your emails in Microsoft Outlook once you fix the errors. This way you will reduce the total size of files that Outlook has to connect to when you open it, and will minimize the odds of getting that error again.

P.S. There is another tool in the folder where scanpst.exe lives called scanost.exe. I don’t use it since it doesn’t fix the errors in the PST or OST file as the scanpst.exe tool.

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