Solved Outlook 2010 mail accounts don't respond

[tbernstein]

Outlook has stopped sending or receiving mail. The account buttons do nothing when I try to amend or add an account. Mail to be sent goes into the outbox and stays there. Nothing comes in. Old mail is still accessible. (Or was).
The calandar now tells me that it can't save. But that may be because of the other stuff I've done to try to solve the mail problem ( as I got more and more desperate). Or it may already having been in that state. I hadn't checked it.

Steps so far.
Repair of .pst files. It said it had repaired problems. but it still didn't work.
Copied .pst files from backup - no different.
Uninstalled and reinstalled - no different when I reinstall. In fact the account folder trees and stored messages are exactly the same; even the ones in the outbox.
Revo-uninstalled then reinstalled - as above. The reinstalls actually look the same as the uninstalls
Deleted appdata Outlook folders then uninstalled and reinstalled.
Deleted .pst files and reinstalled - got messages asking for them.

The "File" menu looks very strange- see below The add account and account settings buttons don't respond. I don't use Hotmail so don't see what the Upgrade connector is about. And anyway it's been like that for days. (I did even try a manual download and install.
of that, but it made no difference)

 

[Darryl Licht]

tbernstein:

Was this a recent upgrade from Outlook 2007 or previous, or a standard clean install of the product? I had similar "strange" things happen after I upgraded from Office 2007 to 2010. Outlook kept forgetting my passwords to my 8 different email accounts! There were many changes in Outlook 2010, specifically in how it treats multiple email accounts. You might try this: How to import .nk2 files into Outlook 2010

I am also assuming that this is a legit retail copy of MS Office 2010... am I correct?

 

[tbernstein]

It's a full retail copy of MS Office 2010. All was working fine until a few days ago, when I noticed that an email was stuck in the outbox. Then i realised I hadn't had any emails in either. ( I don't use Outlook for most of my email accounts - it's the Outlook calendar that is most important - I use it to synch with my Blackberry and Google calendars).
It was an upgrade from M O 2003, but that was ages ago. It's always worked fine until now.

The worrying part is that I can't seem to get a full, clean install. I can easily replace the data if the software is working.

(I'm getting by by synching my Blackberry to my Google calendar and then my Google calendar to a Thunderbird calendar - but it's not ideal, I would much rather synch my BB directly to my PC with Outlook and have the remote calendar as the added extra. It wouldn't be a problem if Thunderbird would talk to the BB the way that Outlook does. I'd just abandon Outlook ).

Postscript: Entries transferred to Outolok via my Blackberry desktop synch will save normally and can even be edited and saved in Outlook afterward. But Outlook won't accept new calendar entries directly. Weird.

 

[Darryl Licht]

Ive had that happen too... mail stuck in outbox! A repair did it for me! Perhaps try again to repair the pst file using the MS tool... scanpst???

Repair Outlook Data Files (.pst and .ost) - Outlook - Office.com

 

[tbernstein]

I ran the scanpst again.
It said it had found errors.
It said it had repaired them.
Nothing had improved.
I'm quite happy to remove them completely and start with new .pst files.
But it won't let me open Outlook without them. Obviously Microsoft know what I need to do better than I know myself :sarc:

And come to think of it, I chose old backups, from before things went wrong.
So I reckon that Outlookis causing the corruption, if there is any.

 

[Darryl Licht]

You can create a new pst and then you should be able to move mail from one to the other...

Here: Creating a PST in Outlook 2010 - The Sean Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

 

[tbernstein]

That's one of the things that doesn't work.

"The add account and account settings buttons don't respond."

 

[Darryl Licht]

The "File" menu looks very strange- see below The add account and account settings buttons don't respond. I don't use Hotmail so don't see what the Upgrade connector is about. And anyway it's been like that for days. (I did even try a manual download and install.
of that, but it made no difference)

That just doesnt look right... Since this is a legit copy, you need to call MS Support!

 

[tbernstein]

Support?

I didn't realise that there was such a thing.
At least, not without paying a small fortune.

 

[Darryl Licht]

Here: Support for Microsoft Office 2010 and 2007 technical problems

 

[tbernstein]

It turns out (not by using MS support) that there was a simple solution, though the underlying casue is unknown.
I had to create a new profile (that's all). Then I deleted the old one.
Which does also beg the questions; Why uninstalling, removing the appdata section and even manually removing the Outlook entries from the registry didn't get rid of the (presumably corrupted ) profile.

it does feel like one of those annoying points where Microsoft makes a dsign decision that makes no sense.

Ah well. All's well that ends well.