Outlook won't open, splash screen comes up briefly and then disappears again and the program quits

Anonymous
2012-09-13T03:11:43+00:00

My mother's installation of Outlook 2011 has suddenly stopped working.  When she tries to run it, the splash screen comes up briefly (like for about a second or less) and then disappears again and the program quits.  This is all that it does.  It does not display any kind of error message.  It just quits.  There is a file sitting on her Desktop titled Sent Items.mbox and the Get Info window and icon suggest that this file is connected to Outlook.  I assume that this is the file containing her sent emails, but I can’t find where it is supposed to go.

What I am think is that my mom was poking around in folders that she should not have been in an accidentally moved this file out of its correct location and that Outlook, not finding it, is simply quitting.  Is this what is happening?  Can someone tell me where this file is supposed to go?

Outlook | MacOS | Legacy Outlook for Mac | For business

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Anonymous
2015-05-26T15:32:33+00:00

It might not be on autoupdate yet (no idea what's holding it up).

You can download and install manually from there though:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3048688

          Corentin

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-09-14T13:50:55+00:00

    There are a few easy things you can try.

    • Launch Outlook pressing the option key down to rebuild the identity.
    • Delete the Outlook preference from ~/Library/Preferences. The file name starts with com.microsoft and you won't loose Rules or account settings. Only a few minor things like display prefs. Etc.
                Corentin

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-09-14T04:06:59+00:00

    Yes, it is. I even ran a check for updates to make sure of this. I should, perhaps also mention that the other three apps ( Excel, PowerPoint, and Word) seem to work just fine. It is only Outlook that is not working.

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  3. Anonymous
    2012-12-21T18:40:17+00:00

    I have the same problem, but get nothing when I click the Outlook icon in the tray along with the Alt (option) key on my Mac.  I was moving emails from the inbox to files when this happened.  HELP?

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-01-07T19:07:34+00:00

    I had the same problem after attempting to download the latest microsoft office update.  after I did, my outlook blinked then wouldn't open.  As cortig suggested, I held the option button down and it worked!  It let me rebuild the identity, after which outlook is working great!  Thanks for the suggestion!

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