Keep Getting "Outlook closed while you had items open. Reopen items from last session?" Even Though It's Not True

Anonymous
2023-07-05T13:34:20+00:00

This just started happening. Whenever I open Outlook, I get the message "Outlook closed while you had items open. Reopen items from last session?" even though this is not true -- I did not have items open when I closed Outlook. Using Windows 11. Screenshot of what version of Outlook I have:

Outlook | Windows | Classic Outlook for Windows | For business

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Anonymous
2023-07-07T17:46:51+00:00

I'm on build 2306. Is this the reg key in question?

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Preferences
DWORD: ReopenWindowsOption
Value: 1

Yes.

Some users that updated to 2306 have reported that the key was not already in the Registry and had to add it and the value.

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-08-06T11:26:00+00:00

    Your fix is working so far...time will tell. Thanks for taking the time to share it. Much appreciated.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-08-06T11:16:28+00:00

    Thanks for the coherent walkthrough of all that has not worked in resolving this issue. Given the current environment in big tech (with one notable exception) I am not surprised at what happened to you when you made some "not-nice" comments...I will heed your advice. Much appreciated.

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-08-06T08:21:26+00:00

    I agree absolutely with you about not mucking about with the registry;

    But this did work for me;

    If you open Outlook directly from the app menu make a shortcut on your desktop and use that. 

    Right click on the Outlook desktop icon, Select Properties and edit the" Target" field by adding a command switch as follows. 

    .......\OUTLOOK.EXE" /restore

    Adding the command switch /restore will...

    The space before the / is needed

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-08-05T23:03:38+00:00

    I'm just a regular user so I'm not about to go into editing registry values or rolling back versions since I learned the hard way not to do that quite some years ago when I thought I knew what I was doing.

    I've got a Dell Inspiron 5510 64bit running Win11 and Office Home and Business 2021, Outlook v2037/Build 16626.20134.

    I've gotten this same "Reopen Items" from Outlook 4 out of 5 times I turned on my pc in the morning ever since the latest update from MS (2023-07 Cumulative Update Preview for Windows 11 Version 22H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5028254) came through on 7/26/23 - it was not happening before then, ever. Needless to say it was a bit disconcerting the first or second time it came through but now it's just really annoying, especially if I click "Yes" to reopen those items and get a second Outlook window active...

    Reading through this thread I did check "File-Options" whether I could change "Startup Options" and found that there is no drop-down list so that idea is kerplunkt. I also do not/will not allow any storage or backup in 'the cloud' for security reasons.

    My routine is I turn on my pc first thing in the morning and wait a couple minutes until it's stopped with the background noise, then open Outlook and keep it open all day long (I found a couple years ago that constantly opening and closing Outlook during the day seemed to mess with the Outlook data file) until beddy-bye time at which point I close Outlook, wait at least 2 minutes, then turn off my pc until the next morning.

    After the first or second time I got the "reopen items" message, that night after closing Outlook I found in Task Manager that Outlook was indeed still running after I closed the Outlook window, so did a right-click, close. That next morning I still got the same message, so that night again checked Task Manager and this time Outlook was closed - but I still got that 'reopen' message the next morning. Arrgggghhhh! Yesterday morning I got that 'reopen' message, this morning I did not, and I did absolutely nothing different in between with my usual routine, so what do you do with a sporadic problem???

    One might think that this problem might get fixed sooner rather than later, but oh well.

    PS - I had a different problem about 5-6 years ago with MS Office and wrote some not-nice comments on this MS Users Forum on that different topic and the day after I posted those comments (I kid you not!!!), I could not log into my pc the next morning because my MS password inexplicably was 'invalid'... so I'm keeping it civil.

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