Identifying Problematic Plug-ins in Outlook

The Outlook application over the years

has become a formidable tool for businesses and it is today used for setting appointments, booking resources and even managing teams. However there is always a scope for adding more features and this where plug-ins or Outlook Add-ons come into the picture. Today you can come across numerous plug-ins available for outlook which range from time and attendance related plug-ins to mass email plug-ins designed to streamline your outreach efforts. While plug-ins are a valuable tool for expanding the functionality of Outlook, some of them may malfunction or may conflict with the underlying Outlook engine leading to crashes. In this article we look at ways to isolate a problematic plug-in.

Start with starting Outlook in Safe Mode

At the very outset you need to start Outlook in safe mode to understand whether the issue is being caused by plug-in or note. Just key in Outlook.exe/ safe in the Run window and the Outlook application will come up in safe mode. Check whether you are still experiencing the issue, the say freezing or Outlook crashes in safe mode. If the application works well in safe mode, where plug-ins are disabled as default, then you need to isolate the problematic plug-ins.

                                                                                                                        

Start with Non Microsoft Plug-ins

You should initially focus your search on Non Microsoft supplied plug-ins as they are most likely to cause an issue. Narrow down by remembering which plug-in was installed in recent past and try disabling it. Once a plug-in has been disabled restart the Outlook the application and check if the issue has been resolved. It is clearly an iterative process where you have to check out each plug-in before you find the one that is the culprit. You can incidentally research the Internet for common plug-ins that have a record of crashing the Outlook application and start the elimination process with them.

Sometimes PST corruption may be behind your Outlook woes

In some cases it may so happen that the error that you are experiencing is being caused by a corrupted PST file and not an Outlook plug-in. In such a scenario you need to use a

pst repair application like DataNumen Outlook Repair to extract the data present in your mail client and then consider reinstalling the application once again. Once a fresh install has been done and a new Outlook profile created, then import the recovered files back into the Outlook application. The versatile tool can also be used to discover where the corrupted PST files are present and proves rather handy when the Outlook application fails to start up. Moreover if you have to recover the corrupted PST files from a backed up image, say a Norton Ghost file or a Nero Image file, the application will hold you in good steed. Last but not the least the application recover the contents from a large corrupted PST file and break the recovered file into manageable units.

Author Introduction:

Alan Chen is President & Chairman of DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including sql recovery and outlook repair software products. For more information visit http://www.datanumen.com/