When sending an email using Outlook 2002 the message goes into the Outbox and does not transmit until I click the ?Send/Receive? button. How can I make the messages immediately send after clicking the “Send” button? This may have something to do with the fact that I previously clicked Work Offline in Outlook and I now find that I cannot untick this option, and a message appears saying “One or more parameter values are not valid”. The computer is running Windows XP.

You are correct that this problem is likely being caused because Outlook is running in offline mode. This mode is used when your computer is not connected to a network, allowing you to compose and send email messages which are only transmitted and delivered when you are online (i.e. connected to a network). However, your Outlook does not seem to want to go back online, instead returning a rather uninformative error message.

I found quite a few instances of this error message when researching your question, but I was not able to find any advice on resolving this problem specifically when attempting to switch between Work Offline and Online modes. In any case, it seems that the most common cause of this problem is a corrupted Outlook profile, and the resolution is to create a new Outlook profile and Personal Folders (PST) file. This is an unfortunately cumbersome process, as all your email, address book, tasks, and such is stored within the Outlook profile and PST file, so if you create a new profile all information must be transferred across.

Before creating a new profile, we will try a more straight-forward possible resolution through the Detect and Repair feature of Office 2002. This will detect if any files or settings are missing or corrupt within Office, and attempt to fix the problem. Open Outlook and go to the “Help” menu > “Detect and Repair”. In the window that appears, tick the boxes “Restore my shortcuts while repairing” and “Discard my customized settings and restore default settings”. Be aware, this will reset certain settings to their default state (see support.microsoft.com/kb/822238 for a full list of the affected settings). That said, this should not affect any personal data or settings. When you are ready to begin, click the “Start” button. If a message appears saying that an Office program must be closed to correctly complete the detect and repair operation click “Ignore”. Once the process has completed, a message should appear saying “Microsoft Office Setup completed successfully”. Click OK to close the message. At this stage I suggest you restart the computer and check whether the problem continues.

Should the problem continue, we will need to create a new Outlook profile and PST file. As the first step, you will need to create a new profile and then start Outlook with this new profile to test whether the problem continues. The Microsoft Knowledge Base (support.microsoft.com/kb/320842) has step-by-step instructions for creating a new profile in Outlook 2002. Pay special attention to the fact you need to specify a new Personal Folders (PST) file. If you do not specify a new PST file, the new profile will use an existing PST file, which may potentially be corrupted.

Once you have created the new profile and PST file, open Outlook and select to start the new profile. Then, check whether you can switch between online and offline mode. If this still does not work, please contact me again for further advice, as the problem does not seem related to a corrupt profile or PST file. In which case, this makes the problem a bit more difficult to diagnose and resolve, and will require further investigation.

In the more likely scenario that the problem is resolved and does not occur in the new profile, this will be the profile that you will use from now onwards. The next challenge will be copying all your data (e.g. email, address book, etc.) from the old profile into this new profile and PST file. There are a few ways you can attempt this procedure. The easiest method is to open the old Outlook PST file within the new profile, and then drag the items you wish to transfer across from the old PST file into the new PST file. In Outlook, go to the “File” menu > “Open” > “Outlook Data File”. Locate and select the old PST file, and click OK. You should see the old PST file appear in the Folder List within Outlook. Now, you can drag items you wish to transfer from the old PST file to the new PST file. Once you have finished, right-click on the old PST file in the Folder List and you can close the folder from the context-menu that appears.

Should you not be able to use the previous procedure, there is an alternative, if somewhat more complicated process you can attempt. This involves exporting the folders (from the old profile and PST file) that you wish to transfer, and then importing those into the new profile. To do this, open Outlook in your old profile. Then, go to the “File” menu > “Import and Export”. In the window that appears, select “Export to a file” and click “Next”. In the next window, select ?Personal Folder File (.pst)? and click “Next”. Select the top-level Personal Folders folder you would like to export (i.e. the top-level element, which all other elements e.g. Inbox, Calendar, etc. fall under) and also tick “Include subfolders” then click “Next”. Give the exported file a memorable name (e.g. oldprofiledata.pst) and save the file to an easy to remember location, such as on the Windows desktop. Leave the default export options, which should be “Replace duplicates with items exported” and then click “Finish”. If a “Create Microsoft Personal Folders” window appears, accept all the default values and click OK.

Once the data has been exported, close Outlook and then re-open Outlook into the new profile. Go to the “File” menu > “Import and Export”. In the window that appears, select “Import from another program or file” and click “Next”. In the next window, select ?Personal Folder File (.pst)? and click “Next”. Select the PST file which you just exported and leave the Options at their defaults, which should be “Replace duplicates with items imported”. In the next window, under “Select the folder to import from” select the top-level Personal Folders folder, so that all the sub-folders get imported. Then, tick “Include subfolders”. Select “Import items into the same folder in” and select your new Personal Folder file in the drop-down box, so that the items are imported into the new profile file. Finally, click “Finish” and the items will be imported.