Member Avatar for holysmokes

I love my Office 97 (I fear change And won't pay bill gates hundreds of dollars for an upgrade to office 2007).

I installed office 97 on my new Vista computer.

Everything works (word, access powerpoint, excel) except outlook.

i get an error message that says "cannot start microsoft outlook".

any thoughts?

I do not use outlook for email but for Notes and Contacts. I'd be fine if one of the new windows apps had the equivalent of outlook note but they do not. I would sync my Palm V handlheld with outlook and have all my necessary information at my fingertips.

any thoughts anyone has would be great.

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Short summary for and anyone else who finds this old thread: Outlook 97 is from a pre‑Vista era and Microsoft ended support for Office 97 long before Vista shipped, so failures like “Cannot start Microsoft Outlook” are expected rather than fixable by a simple tweak. (support.microsoft.com)

If the only thing you need from Outlook 97 is Notes and Contacts, the lowest‑risk path is to copy the old .pst file off the Vista box (or the old PC) and extract just the contacts/notes without trying to run Outlook 97 on Vista. The open‑source libpst/readpst tools can convert a PST into mbox, separate message files and vCard (VCF) contacts — useful because modern mail/PIM programs import VCF or CSV. Example (on Linux/WSL/macOS with libpst installed):

readpst -o extracted -cv outlook97.pst

That writes vCard files and mail exports into the extracted folder. Back up the PST first. (kali.org)

If you need the actual Outlook 97 program (to run legacy macros or to HotSync a Palm V), run it inside a VM (VirtualBox/VMware) that hosts an older Windows version where Office 97 is known to work. Virtual machines let you attach USB or serial devices to the guest so Palm Desktop + HotSync can run inside the VM; on modern hosts you may also need the community Aceeca USB drivers for Palm. VirtualBox documentation and the Palm driver/community pages explain the USB/guest setup and driver choices. (virtualbox.org)

Once contacts/notes are exported (VCF/CSV) you can import them into modern Outlook or other clients; Microsoft documents how to open/import PSTs and how to repair/import when things are damaged. If the PST is corrupt, run the Outlook inbox repair tool or use a converter as an alternate route. (learn.microsoft.com)

Notes and cautions: always work on a copy of the PST; do not overwrite the original. If you try a VM route, keep the guest offline while you migrate data and document each step so nothing gets lost. This avoids paying for a full Office upgrade while still getting your contacts and notes out.

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All 10 Replies

Member Avatar for seanmsiegel

Have you tried to run it in compatibility mode?

Right click the outlook shortcut and select properties
Select compatibility tab
Check run this porgram in compatibility mode for:
And choose an os its known to work on.

If this still doesnt work, try right clicking on the outlook shortcut and select "run as administrator"

Member Avatar for Mashka

Office 97 and Windows Vista??????
Is it possible??????

Member Avatar for chris5126

yes vista and office will work dont think outlook will even in compatability mode but im not 100% sure.

Member Avatar for jbennet

Outlook 97 doesnt run on my XP computer properley either. It hasnt worked well since NT4/ME

Member Avatar for sarkar

OMG Office 97 works on Vista.. brilliant Microsoft. Outlook wont work. Has problems. Same problem here when I had tested. I upgraded to 2003.

Member Avatar for gofigureitout

Will the new Windows 7 be able to replace vista if I load it onto my CPU? Do I need to wipe out vista first then load windows 7?

Member Avatar for Bloodsong

There is a Vista to 7 upgrade path in place same as there was an XP to Vista upgrade path. (Meaning you can do an "inplace upgrade" or install it over the current OS)

No such OS upgrade path Exists from XP to 7 however, you must go XP > Vista > Win7 a rather bonehead maneuver by M$ after they allowed people to pay extra to get XP instead of Vista on new systems.

As far as the MS Outlook 97 thing, MS does make a point of changing some of the DLLs and APIs on occasion (Many of them infact in Win7) as a result some programs won't have backwards compatibility, obviously the older outlook is one such casualty, I would not expect a newer OS to suddenly start supporting it without some major tweaking of your DLLs.
(Run Outlook while in a developer/debug mode, watch for DLL calls that it can't complete when starting, get an old copy of said DLL and place into the System32 directory.)

Way more hassle than it's worth when you consider the excellent free and opensource alternatives like Thunderbird+Lightning plugin or Sunbird from Mozilla. (These products have been around a LONG time, since before FF became well known, so don't fear that they might be under developed.)

Also the built in Windows Mail (Previously Outlook Express) is becoming continuously more full-featured as newer OSes are released.

Member Avatar for amego

i want outlook97

Member Avatar for yoshidad

Sorry, Outlook 97 won't work (our test was on Windows 7, but I'm guessing Vista is similar). Here's the migration path for the old mail to be visible in a new, free client:

1. Download Outlook 2010 trial. Install and make it your default e-mail client.
2. Import the old mail (it's something like outlook.pst) into Outlook.
3. Download and install Thunderbird. You might install the "Lightning" calendar extension too, but I'm unsure whether old Outlook calendar will import.
4. Use the import tool in Thunderbird.
5. Uninstall Outlook 2010.

...Microsoft has a "Microsoft Live" upgrade path too, but you need Outlook to be available to translate the .pst file(s).

Note: This is not yet a validated method, so ... YMMV.

Member Avatar for jingda

Hi yoshidad, if you do not know this thread dates back to 2007 and the previous post was in February 2010, so i see no point in you posting. But thanks for contributing and providing solution as well. Just remember to take note of the date the thread was started next time.

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