Hi. I have been having ongoing issues with Outlook for over 6 months, in which Outlook will become locked to the foreground. Outlook has no add-ins enabled, and has been repaired, reinstalled, updated and downgraded many times. The affected OS is a Windows Server 2016, functioning as a terminal server. The affected users have two screens, and occasionally when a window is dragged to the same screen area as Outlook, Outlook will remain the foreground focus and the application being dragged will be "under/behind" the Outlook window. This can also happen when the user is using a single screen. This is not application specific, and even happens with the Outlook "New Email" window if popped-out from the Outlook client. We have gathered numerous ETL logs and event logs and have come up with absolutely nothing. Previously, the only known way to resolve the matter was to close and re-open Outlook. However, strangely enough I have found that opening the options menu and closing it (Not changing any options, hitting either cancel or OK) will also resolve the issue. From the options menu, we have tried with the following settings both enabled and disabled, with no luck on any setting: Hardware Graphics Acceleration Live Preview Use Animations when expanding conversations and groups We have tested the Email auto-configuration XML, and the MS partner support rep I was working with has confirmed that it is all okay. I also provided him with screenshots of the connection status when Outlook is stuck, and we confirmed that all was OK there. Another potential solution that was tried was unlocking and locking the taskbar. Both when the issue occurs and pro-actively. We also recreated one of the users Outlook profile. This did not resolve the issue. The issue is confirmed to not follow the user to other devices. I'm sure there are more solutions that we have tried, that I have simply forgotten about during the length of this ticket. At long last, the technician had advised me that I need to rebuild the affected server. This is not an option for us, as the server is used literally every single day inclusive of weekends, and the customer is entirely dependent on the running of this server. I have now been advised by the technician to log a forum post here. Please let me know if any other information should be required, but I feel this is quite extensive. I do have recordings of the issue, and all ETL + Event logs.

Hey All, To make matters just so much worse, here's a further update. I ended up rebuilding my customers terminal server over a weekend and a week, this cost me a great deal of time, effort and money (in lost time + running two servers in coexistance while migrating batches of users) This new server is running Windows 10 1903 Multi User Edition, it is a Windows Virtual Desktop host. I thought I was out of the woods with this issue, a week and a half in and no reports of Outlook sticking to the foreground. Great success... until.... The user has reported the issue persisting on this new server... less than a week and a half old, with minimal software installed. I lost my s*** at Microsoft and got a new engineer assigned to my ticket, as my previous engineer was total garbage and we're going through the trouble shooting and log gathering process once more. I am hopeful this time around, the engineer seems a lot better, and their recommended solution of rebuilding the affected device has yielded no results. Here's some weird stuff I've noticed about this issue, which I'd like you to test: If within Outlook I open up SOME application Windows, the issue will subside. I can replicate this with: Opening the options menu and immediately closing, issue resolves itself immediately. Opening the "save attachment menu" and immediately closing, the issue will resolve itself immediately. If you can test, please let me know if you have the same behavior with the above, I suspect you will. This really must be a programming error somewhere within Outlook, my theory is that when we open one of these two menu's it for some reason "reinitializes" or "recalculates" the Outlook window Focus, forcing it to unlock itself from the foreground. What's weird is it's not all tpyes of windows, for example I tried with the address book and found that it did not resolve the issue. Anyway, I will continue to work with Microsoft on this issue and I'll report back any findings we may have to hopefully save someone from being in this awful, awful position in the future. Best of luck. We have found that your work around does in fact fix the issue temporarily. The only thing is if you go back into the menu after it fixes the issue it then breaks it again. I've had about 4 users confirm that for me so far. We continue to engage Microsoft for this issue.

Hey All, To make matters just so much worse, here's a further update. I ended up rebuilding my customers terminal server over a weekend and a week, this cost me a great deal of time, effort and money (in lost time + running two servers in coexistance while migrating batches of users) This new server is running Windows 10 1903 Multi User Edition, it is a Windows Virtual Desktop host. I thought I was out of the woods with this issue, a week and a half in and no reports of Outlook sticking to the foreground. Great success... until.... The user has reported the issue persisting on this new server... less than a week and a half old, with minimal software installed. I lost my s*** at Microsoft and got a new engineer assigned to my ticket, as my previous engineer was total garbage and we're going through the trouble shooting and log gathering process once more. I am hopeful this time around, the engineer seems a lot better, and their recommended solution of rebuilding the affected device has yielded no results. Here's some weird stuff I've noticed about this issue, which I'd like you to test: If within Outlook I open up SOME application Windows, the issue will subside. I can replicate this with: Opening the options menu and immediately closing, issue resolves itself immediately. Opening the "save attachment menu" and immediately closing, the issue will resolve itself immediately. If you can test, please let me know if you have the same behavior with the above, I suspect you will. This really must be a programming error somewhere within Outlook, my theory is that when we open one of these two menu's it for some reason "reinitializes" or "recalculates" the Outlook window Focus, forcing it to unlock itself from the foreground. What's weird is it's not all tpyes of windows, for example I tried with the address book and found that it did not resolve the issue. Anyway, I will continue to work with Microsoft on this issue and I'll report back any findings we may have to hopefully save someone from being in this awful, awful position in the future. Best of luck.

I've tried my very best to limit our software portfolio on the RDS servers. We have Adobe Reader and Google Chrome along with backup software (Datto) on our servers. I consider them to be very "clean" ... so I've been surprised at these intermittent "flukes" with Outlook. With that said, I haven't had any reported problems in some time. Our current build is 14393.3300. I would support the comment from Nicholas about focusing on anything that interacts with Outlook (adobe reader?). You've already acknowledged that the issue cannot be reproduced at will ... which makes it very difficult to troubleshoot and requires the end-users to be more aware of what they were doing when Outlook takes over the foreground. I wish I could provide more information specific to the problem. I think I know how cold case detectives feel when they hit a dead end. : ) Thanks - Donnie

Hi there! We have the issue here - Outlook is staying in the foreground for multiple users several times per week. Our configuration is: Windows Server 2016 1607 (RDS services installed) Citrix XenApp 7 1909.1 Microsoft Office Standard 2016 Sophos Intercept X Advanced for Servers Profile Management with FSLogix Citrix Files CodeTwo CatMan (for managing Outlook categories) Foxit Reader Adobe Reader Nitro PDF Pro Google Chrome Zabbix Monitoring Agent ThinPrint Engine 11 All software is on the newest update/patch level. All Outlook add-ins are disabled. There is no pattern in common when the issues happens. It would be interesting to see if you have similar software installed than we do (like Sophos or FSLogix etc.). I'm thinking opening a support case with Microsoft but as the issue is not reproducible , I doubt that this will lead to any solution. Best regards, Mischa

DISREGARD. THIS DID NOT RESOLVE THE ISSUE. Hey Donnie, At long last I can close the book on this one 😄 In our instance it was ClickYesPro causing this behavior. We had an issue where our AV wasn't being picked up by Outlook, so we couldn't enabled "Programmatic Access" in the trust centre. While I was on annual leave some of our techs band-aided it with ClickYesPro. We've used CYP with multiple customers, but for these guys it seemed to be causing this behavior. It's such a bummer I didn't catch it earlier, we ruled out add-ins by running in safe mode and still saw the same behavior. But the gotchya there was that CYP is an external process which still meddled with Outlook regardless of safe mode/add-in configuration! Idk if it's less hassle for your end users, but for us I had them open the Outlook Options menu from File>Options, which would unlock the app from the foreground. This meant users didn't have to worry about losing drafts or anything. Sadly ClickYesPro isn't to blame in your scenario 😭 I'd target anything else that integrates with Outlook, and try removing it from the equation. Best of luck to you, I know better than anyone (except maybe the affected end users... hahaha) how much of a headache this can be. Thanks, Nick

Outlook "Stuck on top/Foreground". Issue is intermittent, and occurs usually after ~1 hour of use. Can be sooner

Anonymous

Hi.

I have been having ongoing issues with Outlook for over 6 months, in which Outlook will become locked to the foreground.

Outlook has no add-ins enabled, and has been repaired, reinstalled, updated and downgraded many times.

The affected OS is a Windows Server 2016, functioning as a terminal server.

The affected users have two screens, and occasionally when a window is dragged to the same screen area as Outlook, Outlook will remain the foreground focus and the application being dragged will be "under/behind" the Outlook window.

This can also happen when the user is using a single screen.

This is not application specific, and even happens with the Outlook "New Email" window if popped-out from the Outlook client.

We have gathered numerous ETL logs and event logs and have come up with absolutely nothing.

Previously, the only known way to resolve the matter was to close and re-open Outlook.

However, strangely enough I have found that opening the options menu and closing it (Not changing any options, hitting either cancel or OK) will also resolve the issue.

From the options menu, we have tried with the following settings both enabled and disabled, with no luck on any setting:

Hardware Graphics Acceleration
Live Preview
Use Animations when expanding conversations and groups

We have tested the Email auto-configuration XML, and the MS partner support rep I was working with has confirmed that it is all okay.

I also provided him with screenshots of the connection status when Outlook is stuck, and we confirmed that all was OK there.

Another potential solution that was tried was unlocking and locking the taskbar. Both when the issue occurs and pro-actively.

We also recreated one of the users Outlook profile. This did not resolve the issue.

The issue is confirmed to not follow the user to other devices.

I'm sure there are more solutions that we have tried, that I have simply forgotten about during the length of this ticket.

At long last, the technician had advised me that I need to rebuild the affected server. This is not an option for us, as the server is used literally every single day inclusive of weekends, and the customer is entirely dependent on the running of this server.

I have now been advised by the technician to log a forum post here.

Please let me know if any other information should be required, but I feel this is quite extensive.

I do have recordings of the issue, and all ETL + Event logs.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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211 answers

Anonymous

2019-11-20T13:12:00+00:00
Hey All,

To make matters just so much worse, here's a further update.

I ended up rebuilding my customers terminal server over a weekend and a week, this cost me a great deal of time, effort and money (in lost time + running two servers in coexistance while migrating batches of users)

This new server is running Windows 10 1903 Multi User Edition, it is a Windows Virtual Desktop host.

I thought I was out of the woods with this issue, a week and a half in and no reports of Outlook sticking to the foreground.

Great success... until....

The user has reported the issue persisting on this new server... less than a week and a half old, with minimal software installed.

I lost my s*** at Microsoft and got a new engineer assigned to my ticket, as my previous engineer was total garbage and we're going through the trouble shooting and log gathering process once more.

I am hopeful this time around, the engineer seems a lot better, and their recommended solution of rebuilding the affected device has yielded no results.

Here's some weird stuff I've noticed about this issue, which I'd like you to test:

If within Outlook I open up SOME application Windows, the issue will subside. I can replicate this with:

Opening the options menu and immediately closing, issue resolves itself immediately.

Opening the "save attachment menu" and immediately closing, the issue will resolve itself immediately.

If you can test, please let me know if you have the same behavior with the above, I suspect you will.

This really must be a programming error somewhere within Outlook, my theory is that when we open one of these two menu's it for some reason "reinitializes" or "recalculates" the Outlook window Focus, forcing it to unlock itself from the foreground.

What's weird is it's not all tpyes of windows, for example I tried with the address book and found that it did not resolve the issue.

Anyway, I will continue to work with Microsoft on this issue and I'll report back any findings we may have to hopefully save someone from being in this awful, awful position in the future.

Best of luck.
We have found that your work around does in fact fix the issue temporarily. The only thing is if you go back into the menu after it fixes the issue it then breaks it again. I've had about 4 users confirm that for me so far. We continue to engage Microsoft for this issue.
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Anonymous

2019-11-19T22:57:48+00:00
Hey All,

To make matters just so much worse, here's a further update.

I ended up rebuilding my customers terminal server over a weekend and a week, this cost me a great deal of time, effort and money (in lost time + running two servers in coexistance while migrating batches of users)

This new server is running Windows 10 1903 Multi User Edition, it is a Windows Virtual Desktop host.

I thought I was out of the woods with this issue, a week and a half in and no reports of Outlook sticking to the foreground.

Great success... until....

The user has reported the issue persisting on this new server... less than a week and a half old, with minimal software installed.

I lost my s*** at Microsoft and got a new engineer assigned to my ticket, as my previous engineer was total garbage and we're going through the trouble shooting and log gathering process once more.

I am hopeful this time around, the engineer seems a lot better, and their recommended solution of rebuilding the affected device has yielded no results.

Here's some weird stuff I've noticed about this issue, which I'd like you to test:

If within Outlook I open up SOME application Windows, the issue will subside. I can replicate this with:
- Opening the options menu and immediately closing, issue resolves itself immediately.
- Opening the "save attachment menu" and immediately closing, the issue will resolve itself immediately.
If you can test, please let me know if you have the same behavior with the above, I suspect you will.

This really must be a programming error somewhere within Outlook, my theory is that when we open one of these two menu's it for some reason "reinitializes" or "recalculates" the Outlook window Focus, forcing it to unlock itself from the foreground.

What's weird is it's not all tpyes of windows, for example I tried with the address book and found that it did not resolve the issue.

Anyway, I will continue to work with Microsoft on this issue and I'll report back any findings we may have to hopefully save someone from being in this awful, awful position in the future.

Best of luck.
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Anonymous

2019-11-19T14:32:59+00:00

I've tried my very best to limit our software portfolio on the RDS servers. We have Adobe Reader and Google Chrome along with backup software (Datto) on our servers. I consider them to be very "clean" ... so I've been surprised at these intermittent "flukes" with Outlook. With that said, I haven't had any reported problems in some time. Our current build is 14393.3300.

I would support the comment from Nicholas about focusing on anything that interacts with Outlook (adobe reader?). You've already acknowledged that the issue cannot be reproduced at will ... which makes it very difficult to troubleshoot and requires the end-users to be more aware of what they were doing when Outlook takes over the foreground.

I wish I could provide more information specific to the problem. I think I know how cold case detectives feel when they hit a dead end. : )

Thanks - Donnie
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Anonymous

2019-11-19T13:06:12+00:00

Hi there!

We have the issue here - Outlook is staying in the foreground for multiple users several times per week. Our configuration is:

Windows Server 2016 1607 (RDS services installed)

Citrix XenApp 7 1909.1

Microsoft Office Standard 2016

Sophos Intercept X Advanced for Servers

Profile Management with FSLogix

Citrix Files

CodeTwo CatMan (for managing Outlook categories)

Foxit Reader

Adobe Reader

Nitro PDF Pro

Google Chrome

Zabbix Monitoring Agent

ThinPrint Engine 11

All software is on the newest update/patch level. All Outlook add-ins are disabled. There is no pattern in common when the issues happens.

It would be interesting to see if you have similar software installed than we do (like Sophos or FSLogix etc.). I'm thinking opening a support case with Microsoft but as the issue is not reproducible , I doubt that this will lead to any solution.

Best regards,

Mischa
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Anonymous

2019-10-28T02:20:42+00:00

DISREGARD.

THIS DID NOT RESOLVE THE ISSUE.

Hey Donnie,

At long last I can close the book on this one 😄

In our instance it was ClickYesPro causing this behavior.

We had an issue where our AV wasn't being picked up by Outlook, so we couldn't enabled "Programmatic Access" in the trust centre.

While I was on annual leave some of our techs band-aided it with ClickYesPro.

We've used CYP with multiple customers, but for these guys it seemed to be causing this behavior.

It's such a bummer I didn't catch it earlier, we ruled out add-ins by running in safe mode and still saw the same behavior.

But the gotchya there was that CYP is an external process which still meddled with Outlook regardless of safe mode/add-in configuration!

Idk if it's less hassle for your end users, but for us I had them open the Outlook Options menu from File>Options, which would unlock the app from the foreground. This meant users didn't have to worry about losing drafts or anything.

Sadly ClickYesPro isn't to blame in your scenario 😭

I'd target anything else that integrates with Outlook, and try removing it from the equation.

Best of luck to you, I know better than anyone (except maybe the affected end users... hahaha) how much of a headache this can be.

Thanks,

Nick
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