Tag Archives: outlook

SOLUTION: “There is a problem with the selected printer” when printing email in Outlook

Posted on by
6

Today, I encountered an issue that was new to me. A client’s PC refused to print any email within Outlook (in her case, Office 2013 version, but the same problem persisted in Outlook 365 prior to my correcting it). The error message she received was:

There is a problem with the selected printer. You might need to reinstall this printer. Try again, or use a different printer.

The problem persists regardless of which printer is selected—even if it’s a default built-in virtual printer such as Microsoft Print to PDF or the XLS printer. However, it won’t necessarily affect all email messages.

So, what’s the deal? As it turns out, this problem is caused by a corrupted font. Knowing this is half the battle—but unfortunately, it’s only the start of the process you’ll need to follow in order to fix it.

As the folks over at Kinetic Computer Services explain, copying and pasting the entire contents of an affected message into Word (Close Word if open, CTRL+A + CTRL+C to copy, then reopen Word and paste using CTRL+V) will generate a related (but different) error if you wish to confirm that this is actually the case. Word will complain that “There is insufficient memory or disk space. Word cannot display the requested font.”

You might think that simply reinstalling all system fonts would correct this problem, but as I discovered, it sadly does not. The System File Checker also doesn’t fix anything. So, instead, you’re left to identify the affected font on your own and then take action.

What I did was to highlight small sections of an affected email message and copy and paste them individually into a new Word document until the error message appeared. This was much easier than attempting to step through an affected document and identify manually which font might be to blame based on differences in appearance. In my client’s case, it was the Papyrus font that was bad.

!


Keep in mind that after the error appears once, you’ll need to close Word to provoke it to appear again. So after the copy/paste of the entire message the first time, close Word, then reopen it before beginning your sectional diagnosis of the email content.

Once you identify the affected font, open a Windows Explorer window and navigate to C:\Windows\Fonts. Search for the font that’s affected, highlight it, and copy it someplace else for backup purposes just in case. Then, simply delete the font from the C:\Windows\Fonts folder. If it’s a critical system font, Windows should automatically replace the file for you. If it doesn’t, try right-clicking the copied file (located outside of the Windows Fonts folder) and choosing Install for all users. It should complain about the font being corrupted, and then install a good version for you automatically.

If all else fails and Windows can’t work this out on its own, find yourself another Windows machine and manually copy the font from there, then install it on the affected machine. Once this is all done, close and reopen Outlook—and the problem is solved!

SOLUTION: Word/Excel hangs when opening files/scrolling is greyed out

Posted on by
2

Recently, a number of machines I’ve serviced have experienced a problem where particular Office files hang when scrolling through them. At first, this seemed likely to be an issue with Hardware Accelerated graphics rendering, but that wasn’t the case.

The actual issue lies with what’s called Protected View. It’s designed to bolster security by limiting the permissions of files opened from risky locations, but at least currently, it’s leading to some broken functionality on a lot of machines.

The best solution that I’ve found (as a workaround) is to simply disable Protected View entirely until Microsoft sorts this out and releases a patch. Here’s how to do that:

  1. Open the affected Office application (you have to do this separately with all affected applications)!
  2. Navigate to: File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Protected View
  3. Uncheck all of the items within this dialog, as seen below.

Problem solved!

SOLUTION: Outlook 2016 will not start (stuck on “Loading Profile”)

Posted on by
Reply

This morning, I received a call from a client who was unable to open Outlook 2016 suddenly following an upgrade to the Windows 10 Creators Update.  This problem may or may not have been directly related to that update, but the timing was at the very least coordinated with it.

Each time the client clicked the shortcut to open Outlook, the splash screen opened and Outlook would hang on the “Loading Profile” screen.  These sorts of symptoms are actually not all that uncommon, and a range of different solutions exist to rectify them.

The solution this time, however, was not at all obvious.  After trying all of the usual fixes:

  • Disabling Hardware Acceleration via the registry
  • Starting Outlook in Safe Mode (outlook.exe /safe)
  • Checking/disabling compatibility troubleshooter flags on the Outlook shortcut
  • Resetting the nav pane (outlook.exe /resetnavpane)
  • Creating a new Outlook profile
  • Repairing Outlook via an Office 2016 Online Repair
  • Completely reinstalling Office 2016
  • sfc /scannow
  • DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
  • netsh winsock reset
  • netsh int ip reset
  • ipconfig /flushdns
  • A complete Windows 10 “network reset”

Nothing corrected the problem.  Only one bizarre workaround provoked it to open with the Exchange account attached, and that was to disable all network connectivity (in other words, by invoking, for instance, Airplane Mode).  While disconnected, Outlook opened right up.

Some troubleshooting using Process Explorer revealed that Outlook TCP connections were opening but apparently failing during the launch.  This, along with a run of the Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant for Office 365, eventually led to the solution:

Disabling IPV6 in the network adapter!

Here’s how:

  1. Right-click the Start Menu and choose Network Connections.
    1. (If on the latest Windows 10 build, you’ll need to perform this step next:) Scroll down to the bottom and click Change adapter options
  2. Double-click your primary network adapter.
  3. Click Properties.
  4. UNcheck Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6)
  5. Click OK.

Voila!  Outlook now opens normally.

After this one, I had a beer.

SOLUTION: Microsoft Outlook 2013 hangs at “Loading Profile…” after Office Update

Posted on by
93

Now here’s an interesting conundrum.  A recent update to Microsoft Office 2013 that’s being pushed out automatically to clients results in some of them being unable to open Outlook 2013.  Instead of running normally, the program will hang at the “Loading Profile” stage of launch, as though the profile is corrupt (if you haven’t already checked this, it could actually be the case instead of course).  A workaround is to open Outlook using the well-known /safe command line switch; but this is merely a workaround (which in turn disables all add-ons), not a permanent solution.

For a much more reasonable resolution, try this instead:

  1. Run regedit (Start > Run > type regedit and press ENTER)
    1. On Windows 8, Win + R; type regedit and press ENTER
  2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common
  3. Right-click, select New > Key and name it Graphics
  4. Select the Graphics key you just created, right-click in the right panel and choose New > DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it DisableHardwareAcceleration.
  5. Double-click the new value and assign it a value of 1.
  6. Close regedit and try opening Outlook again.

This should fix the problem.  I first stumbled upon the solution when I realized that opening my TeamViewer Remote Support program while Outlook was loading kicked it into launching, which suggested either a network- or graphics-related cause (as TV affects both of those when launching).  The original solution listed here came from the Microsoft Office 2013 Issues Blog, though the symptoms listed are different from these.

Hope this helps! 🙂

Solution: Outlook Error: “Outlook Data File Could Not Be Accessed”

Posted on by
1

This is a pretty annoying little problem that I’ve seen at least a couple of times over the past several months.

It occurs when you attempt to sync within Outlook, normally following a data transfer or other procedure that involves bringing an existing .PST file into play without jumping through the hoops of importing the data into a new .PST shell.

The solution is actually easy, though it’s not necessarily easy to discover.  All you have to do to solve the problem is select the folder to deliver mail to (Inbox) for each email account.  Under the Account Settings dialog box within Outlook, there is a Change Folder button near the bottom.  This is where the setting is changed.

But what if you can’t even open Outlook?  You can still access the mail settings without running the program.  The easiest way to do this is to click Start > Start Search > type mail and then open the Mail shortcut that appears under the Control Panel heading in the search results.  This opens the standard Outlook mail dialog box as if you were running Outlook.