Resolving “OLMAPI32.dll is incompatible” Error When Upgrading from Outlook 2007 to Outlook 2010

outlook 2010 splash screenYou cannot/should not, it appears, retain Outlook 2007 installed on your PC after upgrading to Outlook 2010.

If, as I did, you do not de-install Outlook 2007 after the upgrade you may find that you cannot run Outlook 2010. In such case you may get the following error message when attempting to run it:

“The file OLMAPI32.dll is incompatible with Microsoft Outlook. Install Outlook again”

It may be possible that had I uninstalled Outlook 2007 or had I never attempted to run Outlook 2007 after upgrading to Outlook 2010, this error may never have appeared. Nonetheless, once this error appeared I was not able to run Outlook 2010 again until I uninstalled Outlook 2007 as described below.

Note: As always, before proceeding, I recommend creating a restore point in case something goes wrong.

According to this Microsoft Answers post, the solution did not lie in ”Installing Outlook again’ as the error message suggested. Rather, the solution required uninstalling Outlook 2007 and repairing Outlook 2010.

So, off to Add-Remove Programs from the Control Panel to Remove Outlook 2007 right? Not so easy.

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How to Sync ‘Work’ and ‘Home’ Email Addresses Between the iPhone and Outlook 2007 – Error Free

iPhone to Outlook Contact Sync ExampleWhen adding contacts into each of the iPhone and Outlook 2007, there are built-in, distinct ‘home’, ‘work’/’business’ and ‘mobile’ telephone number fields. Yet, surprisingly, Outlook 2007 does not provide built-in, discreet ‘home’, ‘work’ or ‘other’ email address fields. Yet, the iPhone does!

As a result of this disparity, you can get very odd results when synchronizing your iPhone and Outlook 2007 contacts. Unless you are aware of, and properly handling, how the syncing works, it will seem as if the iPhone randomly categorizes email addresses originating from Outlook 2007 as either ‘home’, ‘work’ or ‘other’.

Happily, as described below, the Outlook and iPhone email fields do sync in a predictable way. With little effort, you can make sure that ‘home’, ‘work’ and ‘other’ email address fields are properly synched between Outlook 2007 and your iPhone.

The Problem

As you can see from the picture below (after the break), when adding new contacts in Outlook 2007, there are no built-in, discreet ‘home’, ‘work’, ‘business’ or ‘other’ email address fields. The only choice you have is the default non-numbered ‘E-mail…’ field, and the ‘E-mail 2’, and ‘E-mail 3’ fields (available from the pull-down menu).

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Solving the: ‘Word 2007 Spell Checker Doesn’t Work’ Problem

Word 2007 - Spell checker not working

Among other things, I draft legal documents for a living. Sometimes Word does not highlight misspelled words with the little wavy red line as you would expect. And worse, it doesn’t report them as typos when running the spell checker.

The problem, depicted in this graphic has been the subject of numerous online discussions. See for example here, here and here. The usual forum response to this problem is "I hate Word 2007" followed by little, if any, constructive discussion of what’s going on or how to solve it.

In order to understand the solution, it is important to first understand the problem. The problem lies with the infamous hidden spelling markers that Word inserts in documents to make spell checking more efficient.

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