Tag Archives | Outlook

Repair Your Outlook Data PST Files

By on September 15, 2010 in Quick Tips

Have you ever tried to use an Outlook plugin, and received a cryptic error message that you couldn’t resolve?  Chances are, your PST file may be corrupt.  Recently I was testing out Boomerang for Outlook, and couldn’t get it to work without crashing.  Finally after some time of removing other addins, I was able to quickly solve the problem by just repairing my PST file.  Here’s how you can do it so you can get back to Outlook quicker and keep all your data intact.

First, exit Outlook, then open the Run command (press the Windows key plus R on your keyboard) and enter the following, depending on which version of Outlook you have installed:

Outlook 2010:

32-bit version of Windows: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\scanpst.exe

64-bit version of Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\scanpst.exe

Outlook 2007 and earlier:

Enter the same, substituting Office 14 with Office 12 for Outlook 2007, or Office 11 for Outlook 2003.

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This will open the Microsoft Outlook Inbox Repair Tool.  Make sure it has your correct Outlook file listed, then click Start.

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Moments later, the tool will inform you if it found errors.  If it did, click Repair to fix the file.  It is likely a good idea to let it make a backup of your file first, as well.

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This may take a few minutes, and the application may appear to not be responding, but just wait and it should be fine.

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Once it’s finished, you’ll see a Repair complete notification.  Click Ok to close it, and then run Outlook as before.

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This time, Outlook should run faster and your addins should quit having errors.  If they’re still having problems, now it’s time to start investigating which one of your addins has gone rouge!

Got any great Outlook tips?  Share them with us below!

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What’s new in Office 2010?

By on June 17, 2010 in Quick Tips

Office 2010 has just been released to the public, and many of us are excitedly upgrading to the latest version (especially students, who happen to get a really good deal :) ).  But what exactly does Office 2010 offer users?  Users of Office 2003 and earlier will notice major changes with the ribbon interface, but if you’ve already been using Office 2007 this won’t feel new.  So here are some quick videos from Microsoft that give you an overview of some of the new features in Office 2010.

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Outlook and UAC and VirtualBox, oh my!

By on March 5, 2010 in How-To Geek

It’s been a busy week between finals at Florida Tech and a major problem with an article I wrote on running XP Mode in Virtual Box, so here’s your chance to catch up my How-to Geek articles if you’ve been waiting for me to post them here.

Outlook:

I wrote two articles about my favorite plugins for Outlook: Forgotten Attachment Detector and the Drop.io plugin.

Never Forget to Send an Email Attachment in Outlook

Send up to 100MB attachments with Outlook and drop.io

Windows:

Is IE 8 any good for web developers?  Check out a fun trick you can do with IE8 at:

Edit Text in a Webpage with Internet Explorer 8

And then, Find your computer’s location with Windows 7 and Geosense

UAC is often unloved and misunderstood, which is why I wrote Understanding User Account Control in Windows 7

All work and no play …. well, let’s look at Window’s ancient ancestors!  Geek Fun: Virtualized old school Windows 3.11

And then, to continue my series on running XP Mode in extreme and unusual ways, I wrote an article on how to run XP Mode in VirtualBox.  Windows XP didn’t appear to activate correctly when users started trying to follow my directions, so we quickly went back to the drawing board.  Thankfully, MysticGeek at How-to Geek dug up a great way to still get XP Mode to work in Virtual Box via the VMLite plugin.  This integrates XP Mode with Windows 7 very nicely, including showing XP programs directly in your Windows 7 Start menu just like the official XP Mode.  Check this method out at Install XP Mode with VirtualBox Using the VMLite Plugin, and you can even still see my original infamous article if you’d like at How To Run XP Mode in VirtualBox on Windows 7 (though remember, you won’t actually be able to activate XP Mode this way).

Books, books, and more books!

Microsoft press has the good habit of giving away free ebooks periodically, and they recently released a new on on their blog for free.  This book, Own Your Future: Update Your Skills with Resources and Career Ideas from Microsoft, offers some unique and interesting pointers to make your career more successful in any field.  Check out their blog post for more info, and download the book for free in PDF or XPS formats.

One more thing!

The neatest new download of the week was the new Opera 10.50.  It brings a sleek Aero UI and great Windows 7 integration to the most popular browser that no one uses (on the desktop anyhow).  This new version should help change that; it’s fast, pretty, and easy to use with streamlined menus.  But this wasn’t Opera’s only new release of the week; they also released a beta version of Opera Mini 5 for Windows Mobile.  Unlike previous versions that ran in Java, this version is a native Windows Mobile browser, includes tabbed browsing, and is amazingly fast.  Opera Mini was already my favorite browser on Windows Mobile (Chrome and IE8 tie on the desktop for me :) ), and this just made it even better.  Check them both out when you have a chance; you’ll enjoy it!

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