Why has my Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 stopped working all of a

[ryan w]

I got on Outlook this morning as usual and it started downloading my
messages. One message was 31MB and it was taking forever to download (I'm
talking less than 1MB after 10 minutes of downloading slow). I ended Outlook
and got on my ISP website to get my messages (the messages are automatically
on the ISP site when you login). After I got my messages of that website I
re-opened Outlook to start using it again and now it won't do anything. It
automatically sends and receives my messages when I open and it was goin
through the process and it was saying "Receiving 3 of 4" and then 4 of 4 but
nothing showed up... Now it's not receiving anything even when I know it
should (I had a co-worker send me a test email and got nothing). When I try
to send a message it says "The file C:\Documents and Settings\XXX\Local
Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst is in use and could
not be accessed. Close any application that is using this file, and then try
again.". The problem is that nothing is using this file that I know of. I've
restarted the computer and opened Outlook first thing and it's still doing
this. How can another program be using that file if nothing is running? This
all just happened this morning. It was working fine forever before today. I
don't know what this means or why it's doing this. Can anyone help?!

 

[Orland, Kathleen]

Open your Task Manager > Processes with Outlook closed and see if there's
another instance of Outlook.exe running. If there is, end the process and
open Outlook again.