Most Common Outlook Issues And How To Fix Them
Outlook forms the backbone of the workday for millions of users around the world, so when it stops working properly, work can grind to a screeching halt! If you can’t send or receive emails, access your calendar or get into your contact list, you may need some help from the Think Concepts team.
Whether you are a big business or a personal user, there are some things we like you to try before you call - you may be more capable than you think, and common problems generally have a few simple steps to resolution.
Tracking Your Issue
If you are trying to accomplish something in Outlook and it’s not following through, you may end up with disgruntled customers - or you may lose out on important opportunities.
For instance, emails may not be forwarded, or they may be heading to spam. You may be unable to send an email, or you may realise that you have not received the emails you were expecting. Before you phone the helpdesk, the steps below may just resolve your issue before you dial.
Quick Tip: Waiting for email and think it might be missing? First, check your spam/junk folders and mark it as not junk so it will appear in your inbox the next time.
Outlook Fixes
Does Outlook need to be restarted? Before trying some of our troubleshooting tips, try restarting Outlook as the first step. It's a simple solution that often resolves minor issues and can save you time in the long run.
Unable to open Outlook: Check whether Microsoft itself is experiencing an outage; you may have received an email - or just Google it - if it’s happening all over, it will pop up as news online.
Slow performance, delays in processing email, misfiling or missing important messages? If you have a bunch of rules set up, it’s a good idea to review and clean up the rules to ensure that they are still necessary and working as intended. Check with colleagues who are connected to your rules - perhaps they have checked a box that has created a conflict.
Email(s) stuck in the outbox: If you have attempted a bulk send; you may have asked too much of the system. You may need to slow down or break them up into groups and try again. If you are seeing this issue with a single email, it can be caused by a large attachment or connection issues. Before trying again, reduce the size of the attachment or check the network connection.
If your add-ins are not functioning properly in Outlook, it could be due to slow loading. To check if this is the case, go to the 'add-ins' tab and see if the icon for the add-on is visible. If it is not, navigate to the 'options' tab and check if the box for the add-in needs to be selected again.
Take Notes
It’s really important to make a note of all the things that are occurring so we can do a trace if you can’t resolve your Outlook issue yourself. You should note when you noticed the issue and what time you received your last email and be sure to write down all the results that occurred when you tried the fixes above.
Think Concepts is always here to help you keep the wheels on, so try these quick fixes, take notes and if you are still running into difficulties, get in touch with our friendly team.