• Outlook 365 Will Not Load on PC

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    #2598154

    My Outlook will not load, the last message was

    Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window. The set of folders cannot be opened. The information store could not be opened.

    Unfortunately I had not backed up the ost file yet.

    First of all, my online outlook.com is working fine. I log into it using the original email alias I used to set up Windows years ago.

    About a week ago I was able to set up Outlook using a second email alias I created for that account. Now suddenly today I am getting this message.

    I have tried a number of things suggested on the internet but to no avail. I have even deleted all the profiles and created a new one. When setting it up I used a new outlook.com email alias I created for the account. Originally this worked and sync to my online outlook.com. Now today when I try the same thing, it seems to link in the new profile but it does not sync my calendar information. And then when I close Outlook and attempt to open it again I get the above error. I also tried reinstalling Microsoft 365.

    Is there any way I can recover Outlook?

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    • #2598260

      I finally figured it out.

      I deleted all profiles.

      I created a NoEmail file.

      I then added the Microsoft 365 account.

      I closed the original Outlook file created from the NoEmail profile.

      Now I will back up the ost and the pst files.

    • #2608285

      Actually there is an incompatibility between the Desktop Outlook calendar and the outlook.com version.
      First, I resolved the issue with Outlook 365 by creating an outlook.com alias for logging on to my Microsoft account instead of using the yahoo alias.
      However, this led to my taking a deeper dive into calendar events. Since I am retired I use my calendar for tracking appointments and for todos. I like my todos and appointments on one calendar. So now I use all day events for my to do lists (with appropriate categories). If recurring, I delete the single event as it is completed.
      Appointments vs meetings are a problem. Outlook 365 and outlook.com handle them differently.
      In Outlook 365, an appointment is created with yourself as required. In outlook.com the appointment is created with you as a meeting organizer (as viewable in list form in Outlook 365). This is okay, except if you change a outlook.com appointment in Outlook 365 it changes it to a meeting. To fix this you have to delete yourself in Outlook 365 as required, cancel the meeting and save. Creating a new appointment in Outlook 365 also has its issues with outlook.com. The good news is Android Outlook follows the same rules as outlook.com.
      The moral of the story is use one or the other but not both. I now only use the desktop version to make mass additions such as holidays or moon phases, and fix them before saving.

      • #2644581

        Since I was in tech for much of my career this seems simple enough to me. But I tried to explain this to my spouse and she ran from the room screaming. And I think my best friend sort of fell asleep on the phone. So I thought I would post this here and maybe someone would enjoy the trip. Here is the full version:

        For years my university provided me a university supported gmail account which I have used for personal email. Recently, they had to tighten security, so they limited the storage on the account as well as removing access to the calendar and other Google account features.
        I also have another email account through Yahoo that I use for shopping and accounts. I also used this email address for the first time I logged on Live many years ago.
        With university gmail I could use POP to access Yahoo and it would route to my Inbox. (Forwarding from Yahoo requires an annual subscription.)
        Fortunately, I have a family Microsoft 365 account so I thought it would be easy to set up Outlook 365 so I could access the desktop version at home and the web version when traveling or on my phone.
        I initially set up Outlook using the Yahoo alias. At that point the Outlook 365 sets up Exchange account using the Yahoo address but creating an underlying “email” address. Long story short, I found this creates a host of issues and especially will corrupt the Exchange files. This gets especially complicated adding in the additional email accounts. And it causes log in issues on your Microsoft account on your Android.
        Long story short, I found this corruption issue was resolved by creating a Outlook.com email address which I also added as an alias for my Microsoft account. This also resolved the log in issues on my Android.
        That being said, I was able to set up Outlook using the outlook.com address and use IMAP to access the other account. However, using IMAP creates an additional Inbox for each account. And guess what, you cannot see those inboxes using the web or Android versions of Outlook. One other side issue is Outlook allows you to send an email on “behalf” of another account but most servers bounce those emails.
        Since I generally use my home desktop I can send emails using those accounts via IMAP. When we traveling I can access those accounts via the web to send email. But this still didn’t resolve the Outlook web version being unable to access the IMAP accounts.
        So the workaround was to forward those accounts to my outlook.com address so all incoming mail shows in the outlook inbox.
        Both Yahoo and Gmail will put all forwarded messages in the trash so it is just a matter of either manually clearing the trash (and sent folders) or setting outlook to clear those folders on a schedule. I stick with manual so I can go through the sent folders and file any sent messages I want to save in my outlook.com folders.
        However, this led to my taking a deeper dive into calendar events. Since I am retired I use my calendar for tracking appointments and for todos. I like my todos and appointments on one calendar. So now I use all day events for my to do lists (with appropriate categories). If recurring, I delete the single event as it is completed.
        Appointments vs meetings are a problem. Outlook 365 and outlook.com handle them differently.
        In Outlook 365, an appointment is created with yourself as required. In outlook.com the appointment is created with you as a meeting organizer (as viewable in list form in Outlook 365). This is okay, except if you change a outlook.com appointment in Outlook 365 it changes it to a meeting. To fix this you have to delete yourself in Outlook 365 as required, cancel the meeting and save. Creating a new appointment in Outlook 365 also has its issues with outlook.com. The good news is Android Outlook follows the same rules as outlook.com.

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