Posted by Ben on Aug 13, 2008 in General | 1 comment

Imagine if you will:

1. You have a user who hates Office 2007
2. You purchase and install Office 2003
3. 3 months later, when you go to create a new personal folder in Outlook 2003, you get an “Unknown Error”

As it turns out, the MAPI32.dll that comes with Office 2007 is not compatible with previous versions of Office, but when you uninstall Office 2007, it does not get rid of the MAPI32.dll file. So, when Office 2003 is installed, it sees the presence of the file, and doesn’t install a “new” one.

Fortunately, the fix is pretty easy. Go to C:Program FilesCommon FilesSystemMSMAPI, and rename the 1033 folder to 1033.bak. Then open up any of the office programs (although Outlook is probably your best bet) and run Help/Detect and Repair.

This will recreate the 1033 folder, and Outlook will start to behave normally.

Thanks to these fine folks for leading me down the correct path. You are my Sacagawea!

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Office 2007, Office 2003, Outlook, MAPI32, Microsoft, Unknown Error