Classic Outlook crashing when opening emails? Try Microsoft’s temp fix

In recent months, a long list of issues with the classic Outlook app for Windows has cropped up, including high CPU usage, empty sections in the Calendar view, and a bug that causes the Ctrl+C and Ctrl+Alt+V keyboard shortcuts to malfunction.

The latest news is that many users are experiencing app crashes when opening emails or writing new messages. According to BleepingComputer, Microsoft promises to fix these crashes in an upcoming update. Until then, there’s a temporary fix you can try.

Open the Start menu, search for the Run command, and launch it. In the resulting Run dialog pop-up, type %localappdata%\Microsoft and click OK. This will open File Explorer at the local AppData directory for Microsoft. Here, create a new folder and name it FORMS2. Restart classic Outlook and the crashing should stop.

It’s nice that Microsoft still endeavors to fix issues with classic Outlook, but don’t expect it to continue for long. The company wants all users off of classic Outlook by 2026, so you may want to switch over sooner than later to begin familiarizing yourself. Fortunately, between now and the death date, you can use classic and new Outlook side by side to help ease the transition and minimize issues.

Further reading: Useful tips for the new Outlook app

This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC för Alla and was translated and localized from Swedish.