Outlook 2010 starts but does not display navigation pane (open maximised!)


A user reported that they had started outlook 2010 – the splash screen had appeared and the icon was showing in the task bar but they could not see their folders or indeed any of the interface.

First thought was perhaps a corrupt profile or an addon causing problems but the addons disabled and a new profile the same problem appeared. Starting outlook in safe mode by running outlook.exe /safe – allowed it to start and show navigation.

The solution was a little less obvious. I have in the past seen applications that start but are displayed outside the viewable area. With this one I changed the properties of the outlook menu shortcut to open MAXIMISED – and lo the application started correctly out of safe mode.