OL97: Can't Create New Message from Office Shortcut Bar or Web

When you click the New Message, New Journal Entry, or New Contact button on the Office Shortcut Bar or you click a Mail-to link on a Web page, you may receive the following error message:

The shortcuts referenced above use Microsoft Outlook 97 forms. If you installed Microsoft Exchange after Outlook, the Exchange Forms are now registered.

Use one of the following options to re-register the Outlook forms.

Option 1

Run the SwitchForms utility.

NOTE: Because the Microsoft Web site is regularly updated, the site address may change without notice. If this occurs, link to the Microsoft home page at the following address: For information on the use of the SwitchForms utility, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Option 2

Run the Microsoft Office 97 Setup program from the original source medium with the /y command line switch. To do so, follow these steps:

1. If the Office Shortcut Bar is running click the multi-colored button in the upper-left corner of the Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar, and then click Exit on the menu that appears.
2. Click the Start button, click Run, and in the Run box, click the Browse button.
3. Move to the folder that contains the Office 97 Setup program file.
4. Click the Setup program icon, and then click the Open button.
5. When you return to the Run dialog box, the full path to the Setup program will appear. Click once in the Open box and move your pointer to the end of the line (outside of the quotation marks).
6. Type a space and /y and click OK.
7. When the Microsoft Office 97 Setup dialog box appears, click Reinstall.

This procedure will reregister the Microsoft Office 97 components, including Outlook forms, without copying any files.