One of Microsoft’s favorite error messages is “Program X has encountered a problem and needs to be closed”. You’ll get this message from pretty much every Microsoft product, including Microsoft Office, Windows, and Internet Explorer.
Previously, I wrote about a way to fix Internet Explorer that crashed and needed to close the error.
In this article, I will show you some ways that you can try to fix this same error for Microsoft Outlook! It might look like the following:
AppName: outlook.exe AppVer: 11.0.8010.0 AppStamp:232039e ModName: msmapi32.dll ModVer: 11.0.8002.0 ModStamp:32949d2 Microsoft outlook has encountered a problem.
Unfortunately, fixing this is not easy as there are many underlying issues that can produce the same error message! Therefore, you may only see this error in Outlook when you close the program, or you may see this error every time you try to check for new messages.
Each of these must be addressed in a different way! In this article, I will list all the possible ways that I know of to fix this annoying error and hopefully one of them works for you.
Also, be sure to check out my other posts in case Outlook won’t start properly or if you get a error message when trying to open Outlook.
Table of Contents
Method 1 – Install Windows and Office Updates
I’ll start with the easier tips before diving into more technical solutions. Go ahead and install all the latest Windows updates and the latest Office updates.
If you have Outlook with Business Contact Manager, be sure to install service packs for that as well. This probably won’t solve your problem, but it’s well worth a try.
Method 2 – Delete and recreate the email account
Sometimes this error is related to the actual email account setup in Outlook. You can try deleting your email account by going to Tools And after that Email accounts. In newer versions of Outlook, you click File And after that Account Settings.
Click on the email account and then select Eliminate or Delete.
Now, recreate the email account in Outlook and see if that solves your problem.
Method 3 – Start Outlook without Add-ons
Outlook add-ons can also cause this problem so check if there are any recently installed new add-ons. For example, if you install Adobe Professional, it will try to install a PDF add-in for all Office programs.
If you install some kind of Outlook connector add-on, uninstall it and see if the problem goes away. Installing an anti-virus program like AVG etc can also install add-ons for Outlook. Other add-ons like spam filters can also cause problems.
You can quickly tell if an add-on is causing the problem by starting Outlook without any add-ons. Starting Outlook in safe mode should do this.
Go to Start, then Run, and enter the following command in the Open box:
outlook /safe
If your problem goes away, then you know it’s one of the add-ons. In Outlook, you can enable or disable add-ins by going to File, Option and then click Add.
In earlier versions of Outlook, you can disable add-ins by going to Tools, Trust Center and then click Add.
Method 4 – Uninstall any new software
You can also get this error in Outlook by installing some other third-party software on your computer. For example, if you recently installed a new toolbar for IE, uninstall it.
If you recently updated to a new version of IE, try reverting to an earlier version. Sometimes other programs unrelated to Outlook can cause this error to appear!
Method 5 – Find the corrupted email and delete it
This may sound strange, but one particular email can really crash the entire Outlook program! Weird, I’ve seen this happen many times. When you try to read a specific email in your Inbox, Outlook suddenly crashes and closes without notification.
You will have to go through your email and try to find the email or emails that are causing Outlook to crash. Although this is very rare, it can happen and can be very difficult to find.
My suggestion is to just click on the first email and just slowly go down through the emails until you find the broken email.
Method 6 – Replace msmapi32.dll with an older version
Some people have sworn that by replacing this file with a different version, their problem went away. However, this is a bit more complicated because they have multiple versions of this file and you have to figure out which one actually works.
It’s best to just copy the file you currently have to another location and then try different versions of this file.
You’ll have to do a Google search for msmapi32.dll to actually find and download the files, but this might work for some.
Method 7 – Delete or rename autocomplete data file
You can also try to delete the autocomplete history file, as it is sometimes corrupted and can cause this error. First, make sure you can see hidden files and folders by going to Windows Explorer and clicking Tools, Optionclick View tabs and selections Show hidden files and folders.
Now navigate to the following directory:
C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook
Now find the file with the extension .NK2 and rename the extension to something else or just delete the file. Outlook will automatically recreate it and hopefully the new version will be bug-free.
That’s about it! If your problem persists, you can always try to completely uninstall Outlook and reinstall it and see if that works. Also, one of the above methods should fix your Outlook error! If not, post a comment and I’ll try to help! Interesting!
