A damaged or corrupted Outlook user profile is a common reason for “Outlook won’t open” errors. Creating a fresh profile can provide a clean slate for Outlook to start. Outlook stores all your email messages, meetings and events, contacts, and tasks in data files. You can run the Inbox Repair Tool (scanpst.exe) to scan your Outlook data files and repair errors.

A more general version that can also fix Office, Microsoft 365, and other Outlook problems can be found here. Currently, you can’t use Outlook on Windows to edit calendars that are shared with your Outlook.com account, even if you’ve reconnected your Outlook.com account to Outlook. We’re working to make it possible to edit shared calendars in Outlook 2016 for Windows. We are aware that some users may not be able to receive email from Gmail accounts.

Running the /resetnavpane command removes all customizations to the navigation pane. You can determine if it’s corrupted by creating a new profile and changing which profile is used when Outlook starts. Starting Outlook in safe mode, which starts Outlook without add-ins loaded, can tell you if an add-in is the source of the problem. Customers using the contact support buttons at the foot of the support pages, or the “email us” links in support Virtual troubleshooting Outlook startup issues Agent, are unable to open the Help Pane.

These applications and services can interfere with Outlook. A Selective Startup or “clean boot” process can help you identify problems that are caused by application conflicts. Corrupted PST or OST data files can prevent Outlook from loading. Microsoft’s ScanPST tool can repair minor corruption