Outlook no longer closes when I click on the close button [X]

[Chill]

When I try to close Outlook by clicking on the close button [X] it goes
through the motions of closing the program but the Outlook icon remains
active in the program tray. Trying to activate another session of Outlook
simply reopens at exactly the spot where I thought I had exited. A check of
Task Manager does not show that Outlook is actually running. If I select the
File Menu, Exit option Outlook will terminate but not always the first time.
It can take several attempts but will eventually close only using this
method. This has only recently started happening.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Various applications which rely on Outlook can cause this.
See http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/outlookdoesntclose.htm

 

[VanguardLH]

When I try to close Outlook by clicking on the close button [X] it goes
through the motions of closing the program but the Outlook icon remains
active in the program tray. Trying to activate another session of Outlook
simply reopens at exactly the spot where I thought I had exited. A check of
Task Manager does not show that Outlook is actually running. If I select the
File Menu, Exit option Outlook will terminate but not always the first time.
It can take several attempts but will eventually close only using this
method. This has only recently started happening.

What add-ons did you install for Outlook? Some can take a long time to
complete their function, like backing up your message store. How many
minutes (not seconds) did you wait after closing Outlook to see when the
outlook.exe process disappeared in Task Manager's Processes tab? Could
take several minutes if you added a backup add-on.

Same problem happen when you open Outlook in its safe mode ("outlook.exe
/safe") which does not load any add-ons or COM plug-ins? When Outlook
loads, it also has to load the enabled add-ons. If they hang or crash,
so does Outlook. When Outlook exits, it must first unload all its
add-ons. If they hang or crash, so does Outlook. Outlook has to wait
until the add-ons unload before it can complete its exit.