Outlook fails to open with error: 'Microsoft Outlook' exited without properly closing your Outlook data file

Question

After shutting down Outlook forcefully and trying to restart it, the following error is displayed:

'Microsoft Outlook' exited without properly closing your Outlook data file. 'Microsoft Outlook' must be restarted. If this error message recurs, contact support for assistance.

Outlook then exits.

score 80 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 26 '11 at 16:11

80

I've found that for me this occurs because Outlook crashed for some reason but the Lync 2010 client still has a handle to the .ost file. Exiting Lync completely allows Outlook to restart.

answered Jul 26 '11 at 16:11

Tom Morgan

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I had this exact problem and closing Lync fixed it. – jamesbtate Aug 23 '11 at 14:14
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Ran into the same problem, Microsoft Communicator turned out to be the greedy file handler. – Dan Ling Jun 21 '12 at 14:20
Lync is such a sticky piece of crap. Somehow Sametime must have been contagious. – MonoThreaded May 04 '15 at 06:22
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Also applies to Cisco Jabber – Enilorac Jan 18 '16 at 16:47
Your solution worked whereas the accepted answer just told me: (1) The handle wasn't found (2) The .ost file was in use by another program - Lync, as it turns out. – B H Mar 15 '19 at 14:14
Besides killing the Lync client, I had to kill another Lync related process: UcMapi.exe – JasperJ May 12 '20 at 10:15

Christothes · Accepted Answer · 2010-07-14T04:17:00.647

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Run Process Explorer and choose "Find Handle or DLL" from the Find menu.
Search for '.ost'. This will display all open handles to your Outlook data file.
Choose to close all handles to your .ost file
Start Outlook again
optionally - run C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\SCANPST.EXE

edited Jul 14 '10 at 04:17

answered Jul 14 '10 at 04:08

Christothes

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Both this and the other answer proved to be very helpful for solving my problem. – Ro Yo Mi Sep 09 '14 at 18:54

Brett · Answer 3 · 2015-03-17T20:45:43.520

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I couldn't find any processes that had a lock on my OST. Further, closing Lync provided temporary relief since I actually need both programs running. I finally just threw in the towel and uninstalled both office 2010 and Lync 2013. I then re-installed office 365 (with Lync). After 2 days, I have yet to see this error again.

edited Mar 17 '15 at 20:45

answered Mar 16 '15 at 20:59

Brett

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`closing Lync provided temporary relief` -- why didn't you just stop Lync, start Outlook, and then start Lync again? – ppeterka Sep 21 '16 at 07:26

Outlook fails to open with error: 'Microsoft Outlook' exited without properly closing your Outlook data file

3 Answers3