Outlook Exchange connects with long letters and numbers

| October 29, 2018 | 0 Comments

Outlook Exchange connects with long letters and numbers

Does your Outlook look like this? Outlook_E5HL93GR843 or something similar? Oh yes, this is a bad one! I have had to battle this one for a few weeks now. Clients not even on a Microsoft Exchange Server are getting it! What causes it to happen? Why you? How do you fix it?

Well….This problem started in November of 2016 when Microsoft upgraded their older Outlook.com accounts to the new Exchange server. I had to fix many of these and sadly, the only fix was deep diving and getting the mail back from an IMAP connection they left open. Clients were in panic mode! But I got it!

Now I am finding this weird Outlook again coming back. I have found that this is usually caused by a crash. Windows, Outlook or a 3rd party app. There are many ways to fix it, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, then you should leave it to an IT professional. The client I helped today took an hour to fix and I know what I’m doing. She spent days on this and called Microsoft and couldn’t get a fix in place.

If you really want to know what I did…here’s the list, be warned…it’s ugly. I had to open many times in Safe mode btw!

  • Ran 1803 updates, rebooted. Office up to date (always check these 2 first!)
  • I found the mail app in control panel broke, this means Office is broke
  • Owned Office 2016 home and business
  • Opened in safe mode, created new account and same Outlook_E5HL93GR843
  • Ran a registry fix
  • Problem was still there
  • Found a shortcut to launch the profile in root of Office directory
  • Then it launched, looked good, then Windows password popped up with a domain/users
  • bypassed by clearing Windows Credentials
  • Got lucky, opened and was downloading email
  • Then I found clients Office was 64 bit.
  • Gave up, she had an Office 365 home version and as a quick fix, we installed this and now it’s somewhat stable
  • Did some fine tuning, tune up and told her to keep Outlook open until I could help again on Monday.
  • All in an hour or so.
  • This is why you hire an expert. We have work to do, but now it’s just the janky Office and with her Office 365, Microsoft will support that for FREE. So when it comes down to it, folks buying the Office 2016 business prem for $400 are being told it will be $500 to fix. Buy the Office 365 home or business and have them fix their software.

End of story. Need my help? I can do all of this very fast, use my online calendar below

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Category: Outlook Support

About the Author ()

Lisa Hendrickson is the owner of Call That Girl. She is an Outlook Expert and Microsoft 365 Consultant.

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