Can't start outlook

[Paul - helpless]

I have W98 and have been using outlook without fail for 3
years. Recently, without any warning, I cannot start
outlook from the icon on my task bar. Error message
says "a dialogue box is open, please close and retry"??
Does anyone know what this could be? What's a dialogue
box? How do I close? Thanks and desperate!

 

[bondo]

I assume that you are using outlook 2k, 98, or 97 and not
outlook express, since you did not mention the version.
More than likely you have multiple copies trying to start
at once or office got an error at start up and never got
far enough to actually pop up the message. Try do ing a
Control-Alt-Delete, when system manager pop-up appears,
look for mulitple copies of outlook running. Select one
of the ones running and click on "end task". Do this for
each coping running if more than one outlook appears.
Then retry outlook from the start menu instead of the
quick launch bar. If that works then you probably have a
broken shortcut on the quick start icon. If you have
Norton System Works you can run the windoctor and find
these issuses very quickly.

Hope this helps
bondo