Outlook crash when using Attach to Email...

[_Dave_Beltran_]

Strange problem occurring when attempting to email a pdf.

I have the document open in Acrobat. I hit the Attach to Email button and a new Outlook email window opens and attaches the pdf. No problem there.

I fill in the addressee name and then begin to write my preamble. If I send RIGHT AWAY, the email goes without a problem.

If I take more than 30 to 45 seconds, a timeout of some kind occurs and Outlook crashes the second I hit the Send button.

This issue has happened to myself and several users in-house on various occasions, never predictable and random. It has gotten to the point that we are afraid to leave the email and just power it out quickly, hoping that Outlook won't crash.

We are all using Outlook 2003 and Acrobat 8 Standard, fully updated and current.

Some help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[_Jason_P_Rafferty_]

We are experiencing the same thing, have you found a solution to this problem?

[Niche_Affiliate]

I also have this problem although it takes less than 30 seconds for mine - how can I send these attachments successfully I wonder?

[_Dave_Beltran_]

We have still not found a solution, however the issue has seemed to correct itself. I haven't had a chance to query the users affected lately, but I have not had any reports of the problem in over a month.

It may be that the users affected have resorted to using the quick workaround of "powering-out" the email and have made it a habit, OR one other workaround we did find that works is to create the email and THEN attach the pdf just before sending. Inconvenient, but no problems doing it that way.

[_Jason_P_Rafferty_]

Do you happen to be running Interwoven FileSite?

[Shorebird24]

Any resolution? We have same problem, but never associated it with timing. Seems to be quite random.

[camposlawoffice]

I am having the EXACT same problem. So far, I haven't been able to locate a work-around.

Every time I try to send an email from within adobe 9, it works just fine as long as I hit the send button within thirty seconds or so. If it takes any longer than that to compose the body of the email, I get a message that a network communication error has occurred, and everything freezes for a good five minutes or so. I have to shut down Outlook and Adobe through the task manager. This glitch is a huge pain, and I am irritated that Adobe is referring people to the forums for technical support.

[WilliamD_]

I have been seeing this off and on. It is rarely consistent and I have been waiting to find a PC that could reproduce this. I finally got one and was able to reproduce the issue about a dozen times back to back, often when the message has been open for a couple minutes. I have been using Windows Debug tools to isolate the culprit and capture a dmp file to analyze. In each instance of the problem a hang is produced after clicking OK to the message. This is where I have been starting the capture. In our case all the dumps of outlook.exe show the culprit as being valkyrie.dll, an add-in associated with Symantec Enterprise Vault. After disabling the add-in, the issue could not be reproduced. I am not 100% convinced though. I would like to know if other dumps outside of our environment point to the same culprit.

To capture a dmp file you will need to install the debugging tools for windows from Microsoft. Once installed, go into the folder where it is installed (C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows (x86) by default) and run adplus.vbs. Dont worry about the details now, just click OK or Yes to the prompts. You will use adplus from the command line when the issue happens. To do this:

1. Create the problem and click OK to the "The operation failed due to network or other communication problems. Check your connections and try again". Outlook should become unresponsive/hung up.
2. Open command window (Start>Run and type cmd).
3. Navigate to the folder where the debugging tools were installed (cd c:\program files\debugginf tools for windows (x86))
4. Create a dmp file by running the following: adplus -hang -pn outlook.exe (-hang will tell adplus that a there is a hung application you wish to dump and -pn specifies the process name).*
5. A dialog box will indicate that a folder has been created in the windows debugging folder. It will be named something like Hang_Mode__Date_... The date and time will correspond to the date and time of when the dump took place. Go into this folder and verify there is a .dmp file. The name of the file corresponds to the process ID of the process, the process name, and date and time. The file can be fairly large since it consists of a memory dump.
6. To analyze this file, open Windbg from the exe or from Start>Programs>Debugging Tools for Windows>WinDbg.
7. Go to File>Open Crash Dump and locate the file above.
8. Dont worry about all the jiberish you initially see. In the empty line at the bottom run the following command: !analyze -v. While the file is being analyzed, the status message will say BUSY. Dont worry about the "Error: Symbol file could not be found..."
9. Look for the FAULTING_MODULE and MODULE_NAME. In our case the culprit this was ntdll and Valkyrie. As mentioned above, Valkyrie.dll is associated with the Symantec Enterprise add-in and this is what we are currently looking at with Symantec.

This is an example of the dump:

*If outlook is crashing instead of getting hung up, then you will need to run adplus in crash mode instead. This needs to be done before the problem is created as opposed to waiting when outlook become hung. To do this run adplus -crash -pn outlook.exe. The dmp file will be created once Outlook has crashed in the windows debugging folder.

[Darrell 9028]

This was frustrating because none of the answers on the web fixed my problem, but I finally got it fixed.  I am using Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit with Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.2.5...  The problem was with Outlook.  I had to disable the "Outlook Change Notifier plug-in" now all works fine.

[WilliamD_]

We were eventually able to capture a few more hangs without any outlook add-ins and submitted to microsoft to analyze. They were able to reproduce in-house and they are looking into it. We don't use the Outlook Change Notifier plug-in.

[_Teeper_]

Did you get any response from MS yet?

[WilliamD_]

They were unable to reproduce the issue. I still continue to see this every now and then but byt the time it gets to me or I have a chance to take a look, I cannot recreate. Supposedly, MS says this issue has been addressed with Outlook 2010 in an update. Since we have not yet made the transition to that environment, I cant see if it will persist or not. I am not the lead on this so it may go unresolved and remain a mystery.

[whitehurstge]

My agency is having the same issue.  It is happening to random people at random times.  I tried cleaning out the temp files and uninstalling/reinstalling Reader X but nothing seemed to work.  About the only "fix" was to downgrade to Reader 9.4.3.  So far the people I have done this to have had no issues.  Does anyone else know of a fix for this?

[askdjh92834]

It's hard to believe but It's June 2011, 3 years after this problem was reported, and it is still going on.

We've just had it crop up again and I thought I'd check this thread again because it's been over a year since I last checked. I expected to find a solution but it looks like I'm out of luck.

I'm guessing we'll still be experiencing this problem in another 3 years time too. You'd think that someone at Adobe would consider this worth investigating and solving but they clearly can't be bothered.

[raadore]

Check your installed font and make sure Helvetica is not installed and active. Deactivate any Helvetica fonts and your problems should go away.

[WilliamD_]

No Helvetica fonts in the last case I saw.

[PoolHero]

Well, I have been to able to fix this issue for the time being.  I'm running XP, OL2007, and Adobe Standard 6.  After reading this thread (this one is the best one on the net by-the-way) I disabled Norton antivirus and email scanning.  That didn't work so I went back into Norton and clicked the fix my pc button. 

The next thing I looked for were the OL add-ins.  I found one called PDFMOUTLOOK that had been disabled.  I enabled it and restarted OL. 

When outlook started I received a generic message from Norton about them automatically placing spam in my junk mail folder.  The Norton toolbar had also reappeared.  I had disabled it awhile ago and when I clicked fix my pc it automatically got re-enable.

After that, OL didn't hang anymore.  I couldn't disable the add-in again because I couldn't find a way to do it so I made it inactive instead.  Unfortunately, OL didn't start hanging again so I can't confirm exactly what I did to stop it from happening.

All in all, judging by the posts above and what I've found, I'd say the issue is likely with Norton, OL's add-ins, or both.  I hope this helps to resolve others issues.