How to Fix Broken Outlook – 7 Simple Tricks to Fix Outlook’s Constantly Freezing or Hanging Problems.
Is Outlook not opening properly or at all? Is it constantly crashing or freezing, making it a difficult to work with emails. Here are some tips to solve the issue.
Outlook is truly an excellent software product from Microsoft for managing your email needs, but as your database grows, so do the problems with Outlook. The likelihood of corruption increases when your OST or PST files become too large. In fact, if you are having problems with Outlook, in majority of cases, it is because your OST or PST files have become too large and are corrupt.
How to Fix Broken Outlook
Here are few solutions that could help you in similar situations. These are not one separate method with multiple steps, but different techniques. One might work for some, another one might work for different users. So, give them a try and which one is for you.
Scan PST
Microsoft has an official tiny program called “ScanPST.exe” that you can find inside Microsoft Office/Outlook installation folder. Open it and scan all the OST/PST data files have. Outlook will fix any errors or damage they might contain.
If Outlook is still giving you a hard time, here are some more solutions.
Rebuild data files or profile
Data files and profile are almost the same thing in this context. When you launch Outlook for the first time, Outlook automatically creates a profile and an OST (or PST) file to store the data. By creating a new profile and setting it as default, you bypass the need for Outlook to interact or access the older data files, which may be corrupt. Just go “Mail” settings from control panel and click “Data files” and select “Add new.” Use the new profile as default and try to launch Outlook. Hopefully, it will work this time without crashing.
Use Safe Mode
Outlook has a safe mode that allow you to use the client in safe mode, which means that some features/add-ons/plugins may be disabled. You can at least launch Outlook irrespective of corrupt files in the profile database and may even look for problems in the safe mode. Disable anything that you feel might be causing all the problems. Then quit Outlook and launch it in normal mode. You can open Outlook in safe mode by searching for ‘Outlook.exe safe’ in either ‘Run’ command or directly from Windows search.
Update, Reinstall, Repair
These three things fall under the same category, for they have nothing to do with your data or data files or profiles, but with the software application itself. If none of the solutions above work, try these three things:
- Update: Check for latest updates and install them. Maybe a software bug is causing all the issues and by updating, you might get rid of it.
- Repair: Go to “Programs and Features,” right click “Microsoft Office” and click “Change” or “repair.” This will reset a lot of factors in Outlook automatically. You have two options to do that: online or offline. If you have time, try Online repairing as it is more effective and repairs the installation more closely. Note that online repair is not updates.
- Reinstall: This should be the last resort and think before reinstalling the entire client. This will almost certainly “fix” Outlook but there can be a few things you can’t recover or restore after the installation that was present in previous one.
Try one of these methods. A large percentage of factors causing Outlook to crash or not responding can be resolved by the above stated methods.
How to Fix Broken Outlook, these are the 7 very simple ways you can take to solve those issues.