Send Button Missing in Outlook Meeting Requests

The other day I had a few computers that were trying to send meeting requests from Outlook however the send button would not show up on the meeting request. I spent quite a lot of time trying different fixes for this and even a paid support call with Microsoft did not manage to fix this. Eventually I tried to create a new Outlook profile and was presented with the error “there was an error locating one of the items needed to complete this operation. It might have been deleted.”

This error message led me to an issue with the mapi service and I eventually found the solution was to do a search for all of the files named “mapisvc.inf” on the computer and rename them to “mapisvc.inf.old” so that a copy of the old file is still kept just in case. I then re-opened Outlook which re-creates this file and the meeting requests now work.

Excel 2003/2007 Legacy Files Blocked

If you are running Excel 2003 or 2007 and seeing the message “You are attempting to open a file type that is blocked by your registry policy setting.” when you try to open certain files such as Lotus files you may need to make the following registry changes to get the files to work.

Excel 2003:

1. Go to start>run and open the registry editor by using the command “regedit.”
2. Browse to the registry key “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Security\FileOpenBlock.”
3. If the key “FileOpenBlock” does not exist you may need to create it before you can make the next few changes.
4. In the right hand pane of the “FileOpenBlock” key right click and select New>DWORD value.
5. Using the following table create the DWORD value that relates to the files you want to unblock.
6. Set the new DWORD value to 0 to unblock the file or 1 to block the file.
7. Exit the registry editor try to open the blocked file.

Setting the Default Address Book in Outlook 2007

In Outlook 2007 by default it will search the global address list when you look up a name or open your address book. If you want to change this to something else such as your own contacts you can make the following change:

1. Open Outlook and go to Tools > Address Book
2. When the address book opens select Tools > Options and you will be presented with the window below.
3. Change the field “Shows this address list first” to whatever you want to show first

Word files not opening without program open first

Try:
Tools>Options>General  uncheck “Ignore other Applications”
Exit Word and try again
 
 
 
If this doesn’t work try to re-register Word
Close Word first and On the Windows Taskbar
 
1) Start>Run “word.exe /unregserver”
2) Start>Run “word.exe /regserver”
 
 
 
Start word using the /r switch:
winword.exe /r
 
 
 
 
In Windows Explorer, return to the Tools > Folder Options > File Types
dialog and select the DOC extension. Now click the Advanced button. In
the next dialog, select the Open command in the list and click the
Edit button.
 
In the third dialog, look at the entries in the fields. In the
“Application used to perform action” box, after the full path to the
WinWord.exe file (which should be enclosed in double quotes), you
should see the switches
 
/n /dde
 
The “Use DDE” box should be checked, and the DDE Message box should
contain
 
[REM _DDE_Direct][FileOpen("%1")]
 
The “Application” box should say WinWord, and the Topic box should say
System.

Outlook hanging browsing for attachments

Check to see if there are any disconnected network drives that cannot connect as this seems to be the main cause. This only happens when clicking the drop down list to show the different drives when adding an attachment in Outlook and will just hang for roughly 60 seconds until it times out.