Outlook 2003 error trying to open .msg saved emails on server

We save emails to network server in specific job folders as .msg files to preserve all header info and attachments.

Recently found that I could only open the saved attachments once if I tried a second time it would give the following error:

Can’t open file: <file path>. The file may not exist, you may not have permission to open it, or it may be open in another program.

Permissions were fine for the files and if I closed outlook and reopened outlook, I would be able to open each message once but once closed and reopened I would get the same error message. If I closed outlook and left it closed, then I would be able to open and close the saved .msg file as many times as I wanted – i.e. normal file behaviour. The minute I opened my Outlook 2003 and then opened the .msg file it seemed to place some kind of lock on the file and never clear that lock until I closed outlook. If I looked at a list of all open files on the server, the .msg files in question were indeed locked out to my username even though I had closed the email viewing window. Continue reading “Outlook 2003 error trying to open .msg saved emails on server”

Clicking web links in Outlook Express not working [FIX]

 

I was recently asked or help with a problem opening links from emails in Outlook Express. It seemed that clicking web/url links in an email didn’t open the default browser and load the page, it just did nothing.

Fortunately there was an easy fix [for those using Internet Explorer as their default browser at least]:

  1. Click on the Start button in the lower left corner
  2. Near the bottom right of the Start Menu you should see “Run…”, click that
    [This should then bring up a black window with some text in?]
  3. In that window type the following (without the quotation marks)
    1
    "REGSVR32 URLMON.DLL"

    once you have typed the above in hit return key.

  4. A small window should popup saying
    “DLLREGISTERSERVER in urlmon.dll succeeded”
    Click OK in this popup window.
  5. You can now close the black window that opened up after Step 2.
  6. Open Internet Explorer and click on Tools in the top menu and then select Internet Options from the list.
  7. Once it has opened the internet options pages, along the top you should see various tabs, click on the tab called “Programs”
  8. There should be an option in there to check that Internet Explorer is the default browser. If it is ticked, untick it, hit apply then re-tick and hit apply again. If it is not ticked just tick it and hit apply. Either way you need this option ticked but if it’s already ticked you need to untick and then retick it to make sure.
  9. You may also need to click on the “Advanced tab” and see if there is an option to reset internet explorer settings at the bottom, if so click that too and hit ok to close the settings pages.

Now reboot the computer, once rebooted try opening Internet Explorer first and if it prompts you that it is not the default web browser you should click yes to make it default. Next open Outlook Express and see if that has solved the problem with the links in emails.

Outlook reminders not working (fix)

Having migrated our Exchange server at work to a new machine, several of my employees noticed that the reminder window was no longer popping up to remind them of upcoming appointements, events, meetings, etc.

Luckily there was a nice easy fix:

  1. Quit Outlook
  2. Click Start->Run
  3. Type “outlook /cleanreminders” without the quotes and hit OK.
  4. Outlook will then launch after cleaning any corrupt appointments.
  5. Quit Outlook again.
  6. Click Start->Run
  7. Type “outlook /cleanfreebusy” without the quotes and hit OK.
  8. Outlook will then launch after cleaning any corrupt free/busy slots.
  9. That’s it.

4 of my employees had this problem with Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2003. The above fix worked first time for all of them.