We had this very same problem and resolved it by creating a registry key.In regedit go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\RPC If the RPC key does not exist, right-click on the Outlook key and select New Key and call it RPC Go to Edit > New > DWORD Value Name it DefConnectOpts Right-click DefConnectOpts and click Modify In the value data box, type 0 Exit the registry editor Relaunch Outlook