About The Microsoft Outlook Not Opening Error

Even the most well designed software application can suffer from unexpected errors. Why is this? The obvious reason is that we cannot think of every possibility no matter how hard we try to make things perfect. Some or the other error crops up and you never know when. Outlook is in no way an exception to this fact. One of the most frequently encountered Outlook problems is the problem of Outlook not opening at all. When you are trying to launch the email client, the program takes more than half a minute to open. Some other issues include “Out of Memory” errors, Microsoft Error reports, etc. Fortunately, you need not rack your brain, as there is a simple solution that usually fixes these Outlook problems.

Usually the issue can be attributed to a corrupt OUTCMD.DAT file in your Outlook email program. What does OUTCMD.DAT do? It stores the custom changes you make to your toolbar buttons. If the problem is fixed when you rename the file, you need to make the changes in the custom toolbar button again. You may think that this is a file of trivial importance considering the fact that it is only monitoring the changes made to your toolbars. But, when you look at the number of spyware and adware that changes toolbars and add toolbars, etc, it is clear that this file can get corrupted easily, causing booting trouble in your Outlook program. It affects the normal launching of Outlook.

Now, this gives us valid reason to remove the OUTCMD.DAT file. Search your system for the file and then shift-delete it. When the Outlook email program is launched again, it will automatically recreate the file. This way, you will be removing the corrupted file and bringing in a new uncorrupted file. Here are the steps:

• First, you need to ensure that Microsoft Outlook is completely closed.
• Then, you need to click on the Search button in the Start Menu. Then you need to click on the “Files or Folders”.
• Ensure that “Look in” is set to the drive where the program is installed in (C:\).
• Now, in the “Named’ or “Search for…” box, you need to type “OUTCMD.DAT” and click Search or Find Now.
• You need to remove or delete any instances of “OUTCMD.DAT” and the close the search box. You will usually locate this file in the “Application Data/Microsoft/Outlook folder”
• Then re-launch the email program and you should find it working normally

The above steps should fix most of your problems concerning “Outlook not opening” or Outlook taking time to open, etc.