Word 2010 and Outlook 2010 (Windows 7) - Error Message : "Word couldn't send mail because of MAPI failure unspecified error"
In my environment we have Office 2010 on Windows 7. Since moving to Office 2010 (we did fresh OS installs when we upgraded) I'm seeing the following error on a lot of my user's systems when they try to use the "Send As Attachment" QAT button from within Word 2010.
"Word couldn't send mail because of MAPI failure unspecified error"
Here is the strange part. The FIRST time you use the "Send As Attachment" button, it works flawlessly, creating a new email in Outlook 2010 and putting your Word document in as an attachment. You can send the mail off and not think about it again. However, if you attempt to use the "send as attachment" button a second time, either for the same document OR a different document, that is when Word kicks out the MAPI failure error listed above. This happens each and every time from within Word that a user tries to send a document as an attachment a SECOND time in the same session. If you close Word and Outlook, and reopen both, the session resets and you can send ONE attachment again.
This is killing productivity. I have been all over the web and seen everything tried to fix this, and came up short. Most people seem to have the problem right away and all the time, unlike my people who can get one email off before the problem forces them to close down. I've tried updating Office, I've tried completely uninstalling Office and reinstalling, I've tried removing my third-party add-ins (we have a metadata scrubber in Outlook), nothing works. What could be causing Word and Outlook to lose their MAPI connection to one another just by creating/sending an email?
Any advice would be appreciated. I've pretty much exhausted all my ideas thus far.
"Word couldn't send mail because of MAPI failure unspecified error"
Here is the strange part. The FIRST time you use the "Send As Attachment" button, it works flawlessly, creating a new email in Outlook 2010 and putting your Word document in as an attachment. You can send the mail off and not think about it again. However, if you attempt to use the "send as attachment" button a second time, either for the same document OR a different document, that is when Word kicks out the MAPI failure error listed above. This happens each and every time from within Word that a user tries to send a document as an attachment a SECOND time in the same session. If you close Word and Outlook, and reopen both, the session resets and you can send ONE attachment again.
This is killing productivity. I have been all over the web and seen everything tried to fix this, and came up short. Most people seem to have the problem right away and all the time, unlike my people who can get one email off before the problem forces them to close down. I've tried updating Office, I've tried completely uninstalling Office and reinstalling, I've tried removing my third-party add-ins (we have a metadata scrubber in Outlook), nothing works. What could be causing Word and Outlook to lose their MAPI connection to one another just by creating/sending an email?
Any advice would be appreciated. I've pretty much exhausted all my ideas thus far.
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And you also tried repairing Office in Programs and Features?
ASKER
Yes, here is the list of things I have tried thus far:
-fixmapi.exe
-Repair Install of Office 2010 from Programs and Features
-Uninstall of Office 2010 from Programs and Features, reboot, reinstall Office 2010
-Uninstall/Reinstall of 3rd party Add-Ins that modify both Word and Office
-As of yesterday, I also did a complete rebuild on one of the affected machines (to resolve an unrelated issue on the machine it made more sense to simply re-image it and reinstall the custom software after re-imaging). Even that did not resolve the problem with MAPI errors.
At this point I am down to a couple of things I still want to try. I want to blow away a user's profile and totally rebuild from scratch to see if it's something in the user profile versus the actual image/software installation. I also want to test dumping an image to a machine, then testing each step of the way as we install all of the third-party and other custom software that gets added post-image to see if I can narrow down what might be causing the issue. Any other suggestions would be most welcome.
Thanks for your time thus far!
-fixmapi.exe
-Repair Install of Office 2010 from Programs and Features
-Uninstall of Office 2010 from Programs and Features, reboot, reinstall Office 2010
-Uninstall/Reinstall of 3rd party Add-Ins that modify both Word and Office
-As of yesterday, I also did a complete rebuild on one of the affected machines (to resolve an unrelated issue on the machine it made more sense to simply re-image it and reinstall the custom software after re-imaging). Even that did not resolve the problem with MAPI errors.
At this point I am down to a couple of things I still want to try. I want to blow away a user's profile and totally rebuild from scratch to see if it's something in the user profile versus the actual image/software installation. I also want to test dumping an image to a machine, then testing each step of the way as we install all of the third-party and other custom software that gets added post-image to see if I can narrow down what might be causing the issue. Any other suggestions would be most welcome.
Thanks for your time thus far!
Is there any chance the files are larger than 20MB?
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/email/outlook-2010s-default-attachment-size/
And/or, I did find this:
"Actually I got this one solved and posted about it, but the post seems to
have disappeared - the answer was to start the client application (in my
case Word 2007) in administrator mode. This isn't the easiest of things to
do - for others' interest, you'll have to find the actual .exe file (in my
case Winword.exe in Office12 directory), create a shortcut from it to the
desktop and then right click on the shortcut, choosing the compatibility tab
and checking the 'run as administrator' box."
http://www.outlookforums.com/threads/14219-word-couldnt-send-mail-because-of-mapi-failure/
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/email/outlook-2010s-default-attachment-size/
And/or, I did find this:
"Actually I got this one solved and posted about it, but the post seems to
have disappeared - the answer was to start the client application (in my
case Word 2007) in administrator mode. This isn't the easiest of things to
do - for others' interest, you'll have to find the actual .exe file (in my
case Winword.exe in Office12 directory), create a shortcut from it to the
desktop and then right click on the shortcut, choosing the compatibility tab
and checking the 'run as administrator' box."
http://www.outlookforums.com/threads/14219-word-couldnt-send-mail-because-of-mapi-failure/
ASKER
Files are small, often less than 1MB even, certainly less than 20.
I have WINWORD.EXE set with the checkbox to Run As Administrator, still no joy.
I'm going to try removing any and all non-Microsoft add-ins from both Outlook and Word to see if the issue still happens with a "vanilla" setup.
I have WINWORD.EXE set with the checkbox to Run As Administrator, still no joy.
I'm going to try removing any and all non-Microsoft add-ins from both Outlook and Word to see if the issue still happens with a "vanilla" setup.
ASKER
BREAKTHROUGH!
I went back into Outlook 2010 and under Options, then Add-Ins, then Work With COM Add-Ins I unchecked every add-in that I knew was not a Microsoft Office add-in. Restarted the machine, opened Outlook 2010 and Word 2010, and I can now attach documents multiple times without seeing the MAPI error. Tested this twice just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. ;-)
So now I need to turn each add-in back on one at a time and test after each activation to discover which third-party add-in is responsible for the MAPI error.
I will update when I reach a conclusion.
I went back into Outlook 2010 and under Options, then Add-Ins, then Work With COM Add-Ins I unchecked every add-in that I knew was not a Microsoft Office add-in. Restarted the machine, opened Outlook 2010 and Word 2010, and I can now attach documents multiple times without seeing the MAPI error. Tested this twice just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. ;-)
So now I need to turn each add-in back on one at a time and test after each activation to discover which third-party add-in is responsible for the MAPI error.
I will update when I reach a conclusion.
just a quick note.. it happened to a user here who saved the document in Rich Text Format. As soon as it was saved back as Word it all worked normally.
ASKER
Forgot to revisit this issue after successfully resolving it.
As I mentioned above, disabling all COM add-ins in Outlook resolved the issue, but we can't exactly work the way we're used to without the additional apps we use with Outlook, so I went through and tested them one by one. Turns out there was a problem with a third party add-in from NetDocuments, our cloud-based document management system. I forwarded all my research over to NetDocuments, and they were able to rewrite the add-in to resolve the MAPI errors. Once I rolled out the new add-in to all my systems, the problem was resolved.
Very belated points to DavisMcCarn for several valid and thoughtful suggestions. Your assistance was much appreciated.
As I mentioned above, disabling all COM add-ins in Outlook resolved the issue, but we can't exactly work the way we're used to without the additional apps we use with Outlook, so I went through and tested them one by one. Turns out there was a problem with a third party add-in from NetDocuments, our cloud-based document management system. I forwarded all my research over to NetDocuments, and they were able to rewrite the add-in to resolve the MAPI errors. Once I rolled out the new add-in to all my systems, the problem was resolved.
Very belated points to DavisMcCarn for several valid and thoughtful suggestions. Your assistance was much appreciated.
ASKER