The Address Book Failed to Load. Outlook Express…
…is incorrectly configured, please re-install.
If you are reading this article right now because you were searching for this through Google I am sure you are not too happy. I don’t blame you. Let me guess, Outlook Express is on the fritz, it won’t open (or it will but all you get is the mentioned error) you can’t get your email, and you are being told to reinstall the program but you were never given a disk to do this. Sound about right?
It will be okay. I have been there too. This issue was one of the main experiences that made me decide to switch over to Linux but I want to share my story to help others that are running into this problem.
I am going to outline what caused the problem. Things I tried that didn’t fix the problem, and the way I finally resolved the issue.
CAUSE:
A corrupted or damaged Address Book in Windows.
When I came across this it was because the Address Book in Windows became corrupt after I deleted all the contacts from it at once. I was working on a clients PC and she had upgraded from Windows 2000, to XP.
When we backed up her address book and exported the CSV file some of the information did not get copied to the correct columns. To fix this I manually edited the CSV file in Excel to put the data into the proper fields. Once this had been done I deleted all the contacts so I could re-import the corrected list.
Unfortunately Outlook Express (or Windows) does not like when you delete all the contacts. This can sometimes lead to a corrupt address book, which will lead to the above error message.
FIXES (That do not work)
Now it’s funny that Windows tells you to reinstall Outlook Express because the program actually comes embedded in the operating system. Don’t mistakenly think that a Microsoft Office disk will correct this because the mail client MS Office installs is “Outlook” and not “Outlook Express”.
So because the program is embedded in Windows you cannot reinstall it in any traditional way. Going into Program Files > Control Panel > Add Remove (Windows Components) will only actually remove shortcuts from the Desktop or Start Menu.
So now you would think the logical thing to do to fix software that is embedded into your operating system is to do a Windows “Repair”.
This was a huge mistake on my part. Because I had all the most current Windows updates and I did the Windows repair this forced Internet Explorer to roll back from 7.0 to 6.0. Because IE and OE are embedded in your OS, and are tied so closely together this totally borked Outlook Express. Now the program wouldn’t load period. *sigh*
So after checking online for some other ways to “reinstall” Outlook Express someone recommended that installing the latest service packs should take care of the problem.
I went ahead and downloaded all the latest Windows updates and got the program back to a point where it would startup. Although I was still getting errors when I tried to access the address book.
Other methods that failed to work were the numerous registry fixes people recommended, or programs that supposedly repaired corrupted DBX files.
Finally I came across a blog with a fix that was written out so easy I was sure it was bound to fail. It’s funny how sometimes the most simple solutions are no where to be found on the internet or the Microsoft support pages about their own software. The solution went as follows:
SOLUTION:
The solution was to rename the file extension on any instances of the Windows Address Book that show up on the system. To do this you need to first open a search window.
Start Menu > Find > Files or Folders
In the search field type
*.wab
This tells the computer to search for any files that end with the WAB (Windows Address Book) extension. Make sure you have selected the “All files” option in the search window so it is not limited to a specific type of file.
When the search is complete it might have found a couple files with the WAB extension. Right click on each file and select the “Rename” option.
(You need to make sure you can see the file extensions in order to rename the extension. If you cannot see the file extension open Windows Explorer (Start > Run > Explorer > Enter) and go into Tools > Folder Options > View, and uncheck the option for “Hide Extensions for Known File Types“. You should now be able to see and rename the file extension.)
Rename the file/s from “Addressbook.wab” to “Addressbook.old”. Once they are renamed the system should no longer be able to find the existing address book, so when you re-launch Outlook Express the program should create a fresh address book from scratch.
This will not help you recover data but it will allow you to access your address book once again. From here you can re-import your old address book data to recover your contacts. If you did not back up this data beforehand you will need to recreate your contacts, but hopefully this will have helped get you to a point where this is possible.
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