Thursday, July 16, 2020

Outlook 365 hanging/crashing shortly after launch


Outlook 365 Version 2006 Build 13001.20384 Click-to-Run
Windows 10 1903 - no feature updates available in Windows Update

Outlook profile with multiple email accounts configured. Office365, Gmail and outlook.com

Outlook 365 began hanging shortly after launch.  Outlook would launch be then quickly hang (Application not responding) usually when an email item was selected.  Message preview was configured ON in the right hand window but a message failed to display.  Application Event log ID was 1002.  Task manager was used to end task on the unresponsive outlook process.

A separate existing profile with only contacts management launched without hanging.  A test profile against one of the email accounts failed in the same way as the original, multiple email profile.

Launch issues began at 17:49 after a day of normal outlook use.  Several windows updates applied during the day in the background. KB4565483 KB4565633

Outlook.exe /safe initially also hung.

Remediation attempts

1.
Ran "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\SCANPST.EXE" on OSTs and PSTs in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Outlook.

No Change.

2.
Removed recent updates and restarted

No Change - although Outlook.exe /safe now successfully launches and updates mailboxes

3.
Disabled all COM addins

No Change

4. Used Office 365 repair and uninstalled / installed Office 365

Slight launch behaviour change.  Outlook now crashes (Event ID 1000) instead of hangs.

5. Previously removed updates installed again. Restart.

Outlook launches successfully.