Outlook 2003 may stop responding when there is an incremental Offline Address Book update

When Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 performs an incremental Offline Address Book (OAB) update, Outlook 2003 may stop responding. Additionally, you may receive an error message that is similar to the following: Note To view the details of the OAB update, click the link in the following text when it appears:

To see what data this error report contains, click here.

This behavior occurs if the OAB files are corrupted.

To work around this behavior, use either of the following methods:

Method 1: Download the complete OAB

To manually download the latest OAB, follow these steps:

1. On the Tools menu, point to Send/Receive, and then click Download Address Book.
2. Quit Outlook, and then restart it.
   
   Note After Outlook starts, the OAB download will start anywhere from one to five minutes later.

Method 2: Create a new e-mail profile

To create a new e-mail profile, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Mail.
2. In the Mail Setup dialog box, click Show Profiles.
3. On the General tab, click Prompt for a profile, and then click Add.
4. In the Profile Name box, type a name for the new e-mail profile, and then click OK.
5. In the E-mail Accounts dialog box, click Add a new e-mail account, and then click Next.
6. Click the appropriate server type for your new e-mail account, and then click Next.
7. Type your account information in the required boxes, and then click Next.
8. Click Finish, and then click OK.

The OAB files may be corrupted because a part of your computer hard disk where the OAB files are stored contains bad sectors.

For additional information about OAB features in Outlook 2003, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
The Office Error Reporting dialog box appears when an error occurs that causes a fatal event in the program. The dialog box includes a button to send the information about the fatal event to Microsoft. Microsoft gathers information about these types of events in a database to try to identify the cause.

For more information about the Microsoft Data Collection Policy, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/dcp20.asp (http://oca.microsoft.com/en/dcp20.asp)