I have new Dell Studio and MS Office 2007 and windows 7. This cimoputer has been working perfctly for 4 months and yesterday Outlook stopped working. After 8 hours of trying every fix mentioned, I am still having the same problem:
Yesterday morning I opened Outlook, opened a message from a known sender,, and then a box appeared with this message
" Cannot start Ms Office. Cannot open the Outlook window. The set of folders cannot be opened. Errors have been detected in the file:
C;\users\susan\local\microsoft\outlook\outlook.pst ."

I have done:
system restore
Inbox repair
Office diagnostics,
tried a few other patches I have found on How to Geek and these forums nothing works.
MS Tech support is impossibe to reach, and they are hidden behind stacks of info bots.
Dell tech support wanted $89 to tell me what to do.
Then they told me to reinstall windows 7.
Before I take that drastic measure ...has anyone had this problem? And have you solved it?

And before I reinstall windows 7, how do i get to all of my data locked inside Outlook?
I am fed up with Microsoft and their shoddy products. they are cavalier in the way they treat their customers, and frankly don't care how angry we are, there are more fools willing to part with their money for these shoddy products.
Does anyone at Microsoft have pride in their work?
How can they repeatedly make products with known issues?

Cant anyone answer this

Any fixes?

If you attempt to open Outlook and and error prompts, "Cannot start MS Office Outlook, Unable to Open the Outlook Window", it is possible a service pack or security update is keeping you from accessing Outlook.


To open Outlook, perform the following steps...

1. Clickthe Start menu on your Windows Operating System.
2. Click Run.
3. Type; "Outlook.exe /resetnavpane" (omit quotes).

NOTE: Ensure there is a space before the "/".

Please Note; The following fix only work for Outlook 2007 .

Hope this helps.

I got the same problem too.

I tried opening Outlook using your idea and it continued to fail with the error
Cannot open the Outlook Window.



Cannot open the Outlook Window. The set of folders cannot be opened. Errors have been detected in the file.
C:\Wayne\AppData\Local\Outlook.pst.Quit Outlook and all mail-enabled Applications, and then use the inbox repair tool (Scanpst.exe) to diagnose and repair errors in the file. For more Information about the Inbox repair tool, see Help.


I hope some someone can solve this...