How To Fix A File Not Found Error When Accessing The Macros in Outlook 2007

Posted on May 1, 2009 by LJ Earnest
Categories: Software,Techniques

Photo by stallio Last week I had a failure trying to use my automated email file fetcher (see Retrieving Files Via Email). I was working from home, and I needed to get my notes from work to my home machine so I could parse them into a status report. But Outlook kept throwing an error.

I’m including this in the Tips section because my Google searches on the error turned up nothing. I know this information is one of those things that isn’t going to be useful to everyday life, but hopefully it will save someone, somewhere, some time.

The Problem

I went to run my Outlook file fetcher, and the macro didn’t run at all. So I went into the Macro window (Alt+F8 in Outlook 2007) and got an error: File Not Found.

In addition, the macro list was empty, and when I tried to create a macro by typing in a name and clicking on New nothing happened.

Next I went to the Visual Basic Editor (Alt+F11 in Outlook 2007) and there was nothing there – no project files, or macros. I could not create one through the menus.

The Solution

Apparently the problem lies in a corrupted VbaProject file. The way to fix this:

Quit Outlook.
Locate the VBA file. In standard Outlook installations it will be in the C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook directory.
Locate and rename the old VbaProject file. It will be VbaProject.OTM. I renamed mine VbaProject.Old.
Create a new VbaProject file through Outlook. Restart Outlook and open the Macro window. Type a name in and press create. This should open up the Visual Basic editor window with a correct project file.
Quit Outlook, saving changes. Make sure to save the changes to the VbaProject file.
Put back your macros. At this point you can put your macros back. You might be able to open the corrupted file in a text editor to extract the code; mine was too far gone for this.

Good luck!

Photo by stallio