Outlook 2007 - Navigation Pane View (Contacts) Disappeared

[Carol W.]

I am researching this for a friend. Office 2007 Pro was installed on his new Win 7 machine last week. This is a multiple Windows users machine.

For user A, in the Navigation Pane, the standard contact views appear under Current View. See attached screenshot.

For User B, in the Navigation Pane, no views appear. Current View appears in the Navigation Pane but nothing is under it (Please don't suggest that I click the chevron marks. I've done this more times than I can count). I've Googled this a bit and have found nothing. I did find one reference to starting Outlook with a command line parameter (/resetnavpane, or something like that), tried that but no luck.

I should add that he can easily change the view from the menu bar but he prefers the views to appear in the Navigation Pane on the side.

Any thoughts from you Office experts would be appreciated.

OL 2007 - views appear.jpg

[DaveA]

Remember that each user account has their own PST file.
Has user "B" email account(s) been set up and any contacts added and/or imported?

[Carol W.]

Yes, Dave. I set up three users (A, B and a third user) last week after we installed Office 2007.

I set up the email account for user B and imported his contacts (all 913 of them). They all appear perfectly in business card view (and in all other views for that matter).

It's just those darned views in the Navigation Pane for user B that are missing.

[HansV]

Have you tried creating a new e-mail profile for user B?

[StuartR]

Try starting Outlook with the switch /cleanviews, this should restore all the standard folder views.

[Carol W.]

Thanks for both suggestions.

Stuart, I tried starting Outlook with the /cleanviews command line switch -- no joy. See "no views in nav pane.jpg", attached.

Hans, I think you may be on to something. I created a new profile called "Carol - test" and opened Outlook with the new profile (I changed the option to prompt, temporarily, so I could switch between the two profiles). Voila -- Contacts views appear under Current View (see attached screenshot called "second profile - views appear.jpg"), exactly as they should. I should add that, of course, a second pst file, called outlook1.pst, was created with the "Carol - test" profile.

So, I thought "Well, I'll just change him over to the new profile" and I first proceeded to import the 913 contacts. No problem (yet). I then added his original pst file (outlook.pst) to the new profile, changed it to be the default pst and the problem reoccurred. Oops!

My conclusion is that the original pst (outlook.pst) is corrupted in some way. Your thoughts?

I should add that my friend sends his thanks along to everyone.

[HansV]

Views are stored in the .pst file (in Outlook 2003 and later), so it definitely looks like corruption. So I'd import all mail messages, appointments, contacts and tasks into a new .pst file and set the new .pst file as the default.

[Carol W.]

Hans,

I just imported everything in Personal Folders (and all subfolders) in the corrupt pst (outlook.pst) into the new pst (outlook1.pst) in the "Carol - test" profile. I then copied the "Carol - test" profile so that it has a more meaningful name for the user

Everything looks good.

Thanks, as always, for your help.