Outlook Express Crashes when you Click Reply

Today must be a day for weirdness in Outlook Express.

I had a teacher who was using Outlook Express 6 in Windows XP Pro to check her email. Checking her email went fine, but whenever she clicked the reply button, OE6 would crash. It didn’t matter which email she was in either. It crashed WHENEVER you clicked the reply button.

After an hour of trying different things, I finally figured it out. The problem was her address book file was corrupt. Apparently, when she clicked reply, the Address Book application (wab.exe) would try to open the address book file and then crash both the Address Book Application and Outlook Express.

The fix: I removed the corrupt address book file from her profile and allowed Outlook Express to create a new, empty one. I then imported the contents of her old address book file (which I had dragged to the desktop). It worked! Outlook Express no longer crashed and she didn’t lose her addresses.

–Pete

3 People have left comments on this post



» Tancredi Tincani said: { Jul 13, 2004 - 02:07:38 }

I just wanted to say: Thank you so so so much for this tip, you’ve just saved my day (and that of the rest of my family, too!). We use OE on Windows XP, and it kept crashing whenever we either opened it (if there was an Address Book pane in the main window) or when we tried to open a new message window (by either clicking Create Message, Reply or double-clicking on a message). I’ve been close to tears over this… but now it works again! Thank you!!

Cheers,

Tancredi

» Pete Markham said: { Jul 13, 2004 - 08:07:51 }

Tancredi — I’m glad my tip helped you. Good luck! –Pete

» brad said: { Aug 31, 2004 - 12:08:56 }

when i press create mail or reply my outlook express crashes.please help

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