Yes, Microsoft Outlook has actually devolved.

This PC suddenly refused to start outlook.

The window would pop up, but before you could click on anything, it would vanish within about 10 seconds.

I had a quick look at Microsofts suggestions:

• disable compatibility settings (no compatibility settings had been set, so thats not the problem)
• delete the registry setting for the outlook profile… but it meant re-entering a profile… and I could see some risk of losing the original email file (with old emails that must not be lost).

OK, after some reading, it seems that the outlook profile must have gotten corrupted somehow, and need to be re-created.

Before doing anything else, I decide to backup the existing outlook database.

Since this is Vista, the outlook profile is not where you would expect it with XP.

I navigate to:

c:users{yourUser}appdatalocalmicrosoftoutlook

Then copy the contents of this folder to a backup folder.

There are some suggestions that running this (from a command prompt), will fix the problem:

outlook.exe /resetnavpane

It didn’t work for me, so the next step was:

control panel -> mail -> show profiles -> add -> enter a new profile name (eg something like outlook2) -> OK -> under “always use this profile”, select outlook2 -> OK

Start outlook, and enter your email details (sorry, but you will need to re-enter the details for your email account).

Now look at file -> data file management… make a note of where, and the name of the new outlook pst file (lets say its called outlook2.pst).

Fully shutdown outlook (check with task manager).

Now rename the original outlook.pst to outlook2.pst.

When you start outlook again, you will find outlook has all your old emails, and can send/receive like it once did.

For the curious: I use a similar method for transferring outlook to a new PC, without losing any emails… all the emails and folders, appointments, etc, are stored in the single outlook.pst file.