Outlook Error: There are no items to show in this view
Posted: Wednesday, October 13, 2010
by Billy Irish
BillyIrish.com
For better or worse I'm using Outlook 2007 (for now) to handle all my emails both for business and personal. In general it works really well, right? I've got roughly a dozen different email accounts all dumping into Outlook with a ton of rules set up to keep everything organized. The search function is pretty good and generally I can find an email pretty quickly. We use an Exchange Server at the office which allows for super fast syncing with my Droid Eris and keeps everything in order.
"There are no items to show in this view"
which was totally not the case. There were hundreds of emails in there just a second agowhere did they go? Technology is fantastic, as they say, until it stops working. Worst part was, of course, I was under a time crunch to get a contract out that was, of course, an attachment to an email that was in the Inbox. It makes you feel like a fool when you need to used the dreaded excuse, "I'm having a problem with my Outlook."
After extensive Googling I was only more confused and frustrated. After toying briefly with the idea of sacrificing a live chicken and calling for a Young Priest and an Old Priest I was able to get a (much smarter) friend on the phone. She had the fix. It's a simple solution that worked for me in this case and I've used it twice since then with good results. I won't pretend to understand what this does or why it works but maybe it will help you out! Understand that I do not know what sort of horrible problems this might cause in a different situation so use at your own risk. Keep in mind I'm working with an Exchange server and all my emails showed back up after this little exercise.
Apparently the above issue was caused by an error in the "outlook.ost" file for Outlook 2007. The fix for this was to find that file, rename it, close and then restart Outlook. When Outlook restarts and does not find the outlook.ost file it will create a new one which, hopefully, solves the problem. Once it's back up all the emails
On Windows 7 the file is located at C:\Users\owner\Documents\Outlook\outlook.ost. If you can find it go to your start menu and search for ".ost" and it should pop up for you. As suggested rather than simply deleting the file I renamed the file from "outlook.ost" to "outlook06102010.ost" with the numbers standing for the date I did the renaming of the file. This way you keep a copy of that file in case something goes totally wrong and you need to call in a pro.
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