I inherited my mother's laptop and was happy to see that Office 2010 was loaded onto it. However I have been unable to get Outlook to load and was hoping to find some advice here. It's a Toshiba laptop with Windows 7. Here is what happens when I start Outlook.

First a window with this message appears: The connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable. Outlook must be online or connected to complete this action. When I click OK, another window called Exchange opens with just two fields. 1) Microsoft Exchange Server which has att.net in there. that was my mother's ISP. So I put comcast.net in there as that is my ISP. 2) mailbox which had mom's name in it so I put my name in there. I clicked “check name” and another window opens that says this: The name cannot be resolved. The connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable. Outlook must be online or connected to complete this action. I click OK to this and one more window says this: Cannot open your default email folders. the file "path name with .ost at the end" is listed and then it says "is not an Outlook data file".



I cannot figure out how to get Outlook to open so that I can change any settings. any ideas on how to get it to load?

thanks in advance for any help.

Microsoft Exchange was originally a corporate mail serving application. Did your mother have access to a company e-mail service? If not, as I suspect, you should create a new e-mail profile and use POP or IMAP to connect to the mail account.

Otherwise see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2299468

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Graham Mayor - MS MVP (Word) (2002-2019)
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no, she didn't have access to a company email. I'm not sure how I can create a new email profile when Outlook won't open. Unless I can do that in safe mode? do you know how I can get into safe mode?

thanks! (meanwhile, I'll peruse the link you supplied)