FMP / W10 / Outlook New Email Issues

[oaas040]

Hi everyone, hope you have had some experience with this one.  I looked on the internet and tried solutions i found there to no success (I have also gotten my IT involved, who are unsure what to do).

Our computers have Windows 7 on them, and it works fine (script that opens a new email in Outlook and populates with data...we then manually click the send button in that email to send). 

I was upgraded to Windows 10, and Outlook 2016, and have had issues immediately.  The new email will pop up, and it looks like everything is fine.  When I try to click send a "Server Busy" message will appear with "This action cannot be completed because the other program is busy.  Choose 'Switch To' to activate the busy program and correct the problem".  That does not work and you are caught in an endless cycle where I have to close out both Outlook and FMP.  I do see in task switcher after I close out of everything the 'FIXMAPI 1.0 MAPI Repair Tool (32 bit)' program pops up hidden (but isn't doing anything and closes out).

This can be duplicated.  There are some rare occasions where it works fine...then suddenly back to this again.  It is usually only one email that (rarely) is fine, but often it is like this right off the bat.

We have tried everything from trying different version of Outlook (such as 32bit to 64bit), seeing what is going on in task manager, etc., to no avail.

Is there any solution to this?  I can't imagine why FMP is just not working with Outlook when it did so perfectly before. 

Thank you very much to anyone who can help.  Please let me know if more details can help with an answer to this!

[OlgerDiekstra]

I've seen this happen on older versions of FM with older versions of Outlook, my fix has been to use a 'open url' with a mailto link. As long as Outlook is the default mailer, it should work fine. Microsoft doesn't support a url scheme for outlook, though outlook itself does. If you want to get fancy and try and get more functionality than available with a mailto link, you can always register a url scheme for outlook manually: https://www.slipstick.com/problems/outlook-missing-outlook-protocol/

[oaas040]

Thank you!  So doing a open url with mailto will bring it back to the Outlook client?  When you did it, did it include all the data in the script?  This has basically automated us big time to the point where we didn't need as many people doing this manually.  Would hate to go back.

I think we are on FMP 13 at the office.  It's hard to get upgrades due to cost 😕

[OlgerDiekstra]

Mailto is a url scheme, it's parameters can be compiled in a script and then invoked through an 'open url' script step.

https://www.labnol.org/internet/email/learn-mailto-syntax/6748/

The data passed depends on the script. Mailto doesn't do attachments though.

[oaas040]

Thanks!  I'll check it out.  Having to update all the email scripts will be a nightmare for me though haha.  We don't do attachments, but the body of the emails can be pretty complex...not sure if this will work. 

Did you find upgrading to the latest version of FMP resolved the issue with Outlook?

[OlgerDiekstra]

In my case it was a newer version of Outlook (2013) that caused my grief (with FM13 if I recall correct). I switched over to mailto's initially, then migrated all mail related stuff within FM to the FileMaker server. Now emailing a customer uses standardized emails (more professional) and always contains everything it should. I never tried a newer version of FM with Outlook 2013 or 2016 as I had no need for it any more. And I'm now in the process of shredding Outlook completely and replacing it with eM Client (we use Office 365 as our backend).

We really only use the Online Exchange component of O365, which is what we're subscribed to. Those that need only basic Word/Excel don't even get Office any more, I just hand them LibreOffice, which works just as well.

If only I would be able to get FIleMaker working on Linux I'd ditch our Windows 7 installs and install Elementary OS instead. Windows 10? Brrr. I'll take Win7 any day.

[oaas040]

Nice thank you!  We have O365, but I am very limited what I can do in our enterprise environment (where FMP is always scrutinized to begin with).  So I won't be able to use FM Server or anything else for that matter.  

Thank you for the help!

[Fitch]

Could be an issue with 64 vs. 32 bit:

https://support.filemaker.com/s/article/Microsoft-Office-Outlook-for-Windows-compatibility-with-FileMaker-Pro-1503693076247?language=en_US

[oaas040]

Thanks!  I'll check with my I.T. about that

[oaas040]

On 2/26/2019 at 11:07 AM, Fitch said:

Could be an issue with 64 vs. 32 bit:

https://support.filemaker.com/s/article/Microsoft-Office-Outlook-for-Windows-compatibility-with-FileMaker-Pro-1503693076247?language=en_US

For anyone curious who may be checking this thread with a similar issue, this was the issue and solution!  Thanks Fitch!  On my PC I had Windows 10 Enterprise 64 bit.  FMP Advanced was 64 bit.  And Office 2016 (Office 365) was at 32 bit.  When we switched out 32 bit office with 64 bit, it worked!  

To use a PC's mail client, like Outlook, you have to use 64 bit.  And then it's also tied in to what your PC OS is running, etc.

Thank you for the help!!