Not something you want to take on lightly, but sometimes you have to. Similar to our earlier suggestion of repairing Office (see #3 Repair Your Microsoft Office above), perform the same steps except choose to Uninstall. Be aware that you may need your product key if you received one. This option could be useful if you constantly have to wait for Outlook to rebuild its data file when you restart. No matter how well written add-ins are steps to fix Outlook not opening (and even Outlook itself), there will always be the occasional Outlook problem that doesn’t seem to go away or may not be related to add-ins at all.

The Scanost.exe tool is no longer available starting in Outlook 2010. We now recommend that you delete your offline Outlook Data File (.ost) and that you let Outlook redownload the information from the server that is running Exchange Server. Rohan Wiese is a Technical Content Writer at Aryson Technologies, specializing in databases, e-mail recovery, and e-mail migration solutions. To resolve this issue, delete your .ost file and that you let Outlook redownload the information from the server that is running Microsoft Exchange Server.

Keep in mind this does take a while, and it’s usually best done after the user has left for the day. Check to make sure you’re connected to the internet and logged in to HubSpot. Given the wide variety of steps to fix Outlook not opening Outlook issues that can exist, there is no go-to solution that will fix them all.

If so, wait a short time (usually two or three minutes) to see if Outlook starts working again. Sometimes you’ll open Outlook and then for no apparent reason, it will freeze or steps to fix Outlook not opening shut itself down. There are quite a few different causes for this, but one of the most common is a defective add-in. Here’s how to disable add-ins in Outlook even when it keeps crashing.

Learn how to check the version of Outlook you are using and update your Outlook. This is intended as a general guide to some common errors and I may not be able to troubleshoot through this. Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.

To effortlessly change your settings so that your inbox looks the way you want it to, see Personalize your new Mail experience in Outlook.com. To access the calendar shared with your Microsoft 365 for business account, you’ll need to accept the invitation from Outlook on the web, iOS, or Android. If you’ve already clicked the Accept button in Outlook 2016, you won’t be able to re-accept the invitation from another Outlook application. The person who sent you the invitation will need to remove your permissions and then send a new invitation. You can also add the secondary connected accounts (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) in Outlook.com as additional accounts in the Outlook profile.

These Outlook data (PST) files store user’s data, including email messages, calendars, tasks, journals, etc. By following these steps, you should be able to resolve the ‘Something is wrong with your data files’ error. Also, regain access to your email account and mailbox data. Once your task is done of locating the ScanPST.exe tool, kindly head to follow the below-given steps to fix Outlook data files (PST).

If Outlook is configured to connect to the Exchange mailbox in Online mode, an .ost file is not used. To adjust the number of days of data that are synced for shared folders, add the following registry values. You can limit the synchronization window that’s used for calendar folders to reduce the number of items that are stored locally in your calendar folders.

Be aware that if you are connecting to an Exchange Server mailbox, your mailbox or your email messages are already being scanned by antivirus software on the server. For more information, see You may experience application pauses if you have a large Outlook data file. Optionally, if you have a Microsoft Exchange online archive, you can move items to that archive or create retention policies to automatically dispose of older items.

Occasionally, classic Outlook tries to run a process in the background. Auto-archive, sending and receiving a very large attachment, or running some of the other mailbox tools can all be done in the background. Check the status bar at the bottom of the screen to see if another process is running.

There are three steps you can take to try to get Outlook working again. When you are unable to log into the add-in, or the add-in does not load correctly, uninstall then reinstall the add-in. We have multiple tools to help you automatically diagnose an issue, troubleshoot, and fix problems with Outlook. If you are having problems with Outlook, there are a few things we can help with to get you back to sending and receiving your email.

Now, check if ‘Something is wrong with one of steps to fix Outlook not opening your data files and Outlook needs to close’ is solved. The Inbox Repair Tool is an in-built utility from Microsoft to overcome the Outlook PST file corruption issues. Users can fix Outlook PST files using this utility, but firstly you need to locate the Inbox Repair Tool (ScanPST.exe) in their system. We are going to share a table below with the default location of this utility for different Outlook versions, like Outlook 2010, 2013, or 2019. In earlier versions of Outlook, we previously recommended that you use the Scanost.exe tool for errors that occur with your offline Outlook Data File (.ost).