I have used Outlook 2003 without serious problem for many years.
Yesterday it crashed and when it restarted, the Reading Pane
disappeared.
I checked the "Settings" and the "Reading Pane" was set to "Right" as
before.
I tried setting it to "Bottom" and it did not reappear.
I set it to "None" and then restarted Outlook and then set it back to
"Right" and still it does not appear. I have rebooted Windows XP and
tried again, but the "Reading Pane" will not appear.
Any ideas on what to try next?

I suspect that I have encountered a bug.
My mailbox is very large, so I will try to archive some of it and try
again.

Have you tried starting Outlook one time with the command line switch:

start-run-outlook.exe /cleanviews

This will reset your views to the default and hopefully restore your preview
options (also check to see that your shortcut you use to start up Outlook
does not have the command line argument /nopreview)


--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, team asked:

| I have used Outlook 2003 without serious problem for many years.
| Yesterday it crashed and when it restarted, the Reading Pane
| disappeared.
| I checked the "Settings" and the "Reading Pane" was set to "Right" as
| before.
| I tried setting it to "Bottom" and it did not reappear.
| I set it to "None" and then restarted Outlook and then set it back to
| "Right" and still it does not appear. I have rebooted Windows XP and
| tried again, but the "Reading Pane" will not appear.
| Any ideas on what to try next?
|
| I suspect that I have encountered a bug.
| My mailbox is very large, so I will try to archive some of it and try
| again.

Thanks for the suggestion. The /cleanviews parameter did not make any
difference.
I also tried the option "Reset Current View" which also had no affect.
After doing these things, I found the "Reading Pane" setting to be
"Right" as before.
Changing it to "Bottom" did not make the "Reading Pane" visible.
Setting it to "None" and then back to "Right" also did not work.
I have now cleaned out many messages, but that has not fixed the
problem.

Might a long shot might be to run maybe the version of Outlook Express
that is probably on your system. Set the settings there and then see what
Outlook is doing. It has retriggered my full Outlook version for some
reason I cannot explain.

Jonah
-----------

The /cleanviews parameter did not make any
difference. nor the option "Reset Current View"