Octopus Overlords

I've been running an old version of MS Office on my PC since...well, since it was the new version of Office. I think it's Office XP; Word identifies itself as MS Word 2002 (and still works fine). Outlook worked fine, too, until the latest Windows update. Now when I try to launch it it tells me:

"Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Outlook requires Microsoft Outlook Express 4.01 or greater. You can install Outlook Express by running IE5Setup.exe from the IE 5 folder located on your CD or through the Windows Update website."

Google turns up various old threads saying to reinstall IE5 or IE6. The most recent thread I could find is from last month, here.

The person asking the question said: "There is no IE5 folder on my CD and I can't find Outlook Express at the Windows Update site. Any way to fix this? "

MS replied:

OfficeXP went out of support some years ago, Outlook XP is not fully compatible with Win10, if all was working before (MS Outlook) this would surprise me

OE Was dropped some time ago and is not win10 compatible

You should uninstall OfficeXP, if you can, and if you wish to use MS Office either purchase the latest version, or buy Office 2010 or above from the likes of Amazon

Now, I haven't checked my Office CD for the IE5 folder yet; I'm not entirely sure I can still lay hands on my CD. Although some digging might turn it up, let's assume that my experience will be the same as the questioner and I won't have the folder, either...or, if I do, that it will balk at installing under Win10.

So, can anyone think of a workaround that will get my trusty old Outlook to load again, or do I really have to buy a newer version of Office? I realize that it's 15+ years old and I might just be out of luck...but, as I said, it worked fine until Windows updated a few days ago, so I gotta think there's a way to trick it into running again.

Pick a version.

And it's been an issue.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Tue Dec 12, 2017 11:21 pm Pick a version.

IE6 refuses to install in a 64-bit OS.

IE7 is the oldest x64 version. That one unpacked to an unknown location (C:\random numbers) and told me to log in as administrator to run setup. I am the only administrator, and I can't find the folder.

IE8 behaved the same way and told me that the requested operation requires elevation.

Am I doing it wrong?

Right-click on the installer and select Run as Administrator.

Most tools seem to require having the copy of Outlook functioning to do anything with it.

If you have an older computer, you could copy the outlook .pst file there, and open it in a working copy of outlook/outlook express.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Wed Dec 13, 2017 3:54 pm Right-click on the installer and select Run as Administrator.

I can't find the setup file after it unpacks. (edit) Running the installer as admin changes the error message to "IE8 is not supported on this machine." Bastards.

MS Word and Excel still run fine, and I only use Outlook on this machine to check one mail account a couple of times a week. I can do that via webmail instead, so losing Outlook is a small nuisance. The .pst file dates back 10+ years so I occasionally want my archived email/sent items, but I can live without those. I'd like to fix it if it's easy to do. Otherwise...well, I intend to replace this machine within the next six months anyway, so I reckon I'll buy a new version of Office at that time.

My work machine, where Outlook REALLY matters, is running Office 2007 and not showing any problems with it. Losing Outlook on that machine would be a major problem.

If I were you, I would look into exporting and switching to an alternative (Thunderbird?) before that happens. You may not be able to export after the fact.

I just had to switch to Thunderbird because my ISP screwed up their outgoing mail certificate and refuse to acknowledge their error. With TBird I can put in an exception. My previous email client wouldn't do that.

FYI, when researching this -- Outlook Express and Outlook are not the same email client. They are completely different products. I believe that OE was a distributed/bundled email client with Windows XP and was the newer version of MS Mail. Outlook is distributed separately as a component of Office. They had significant differences even when they were both out in parallel.