To resolve issues experienced while working with Office suite, Microsoft offers a useful tool called SaRA (Support and Recovery Assistant). The tool is designed to run multiple scans to diagnose and fix problems occurring in Office apps. So, if you find an Office app like Microsoft Outlook is not working properly, you can use Advanced Diagnostics in Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant to fix it.
Using Advanced Diagnostics in Microsoft Support & Recovery Assistant
If your Microsoft Outlook account is not working as desired and causing problems, you can use the Advanced Diagnostics section in Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant to scan Outlook for known issues and build a detailed report of your Outlook configuration. Take the following steps,
- Select which apps you are having problems with
- Review your Outlook Scan
- Sharing Results
You’ll need an internet connection to download, install, and use the Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant
1] Select which apps you are having problems with
If you have downloaded SaRA to your local computer, sign in with your Microsoft account and select ‘Advanced diagnostics’ in Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant. Click ‘Next’.
Select Outlook, and then click Next.
When presented with ‘Select which apps you are having problems with’ screen, choose Outlook and hit the ‘Next’ button.
Now, when prompted to confirm that you are using the affected machine, select ‘Yes’ and again hit the ‘Next’ button.
When the new window opens, enter your account details and press ‘Next’.
Once your account is verified and validated by Office 365, the scanning process will kick-in.
When the scanning is in progress, you will see a window with spinning dots under heading ‘Checking’. The process may take several minutes to run.
Once the scan is complete, you’ll see a notification bearing the following message – We’re done collecting your Outlook configuration details.
Read: How to use command-line version of Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant.
2] Review your Outlook Scan
The scanning report will show 3 tabs namely-
- Issues found
- Detailed View
- Configuration Summary
Each of the above tabs will allow you to see a summary of your Microsoft Outlook configuration.
Choose a tab and select an issue to expand it for a more detailed description. Every description will be followed by a link to an article, covering all necessary steps to resolve the issue.
Issues Found
The first tab, ‘Issues Found’ tab will provide you a list of configuration issues that are detected during the scan.
Detailed view
The information contained in the ‘Detailed View’ tab is more for the use of advanced users like, Helpdesk personnel, and IT administrators. It stores information is in a tree like view. You can click any node to expand or collapse it. Besides, diagnosing an Outlook issue from the client side, this tab also collects important configuration information for Microsoft Office apps like Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. To see the related information, expand the Miscellaneous section in the tree view.
This scenario also collects important configuration information for Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Word. To see this information, expand the Miscellaneous section in the tree view.
Configuration Summary
The details of the scanning contained in the Configuration Summary tab represents a snapshot of the configuration settings collected on a frequent basis and analyzed.
If the small size of the text bothers you or strains your eye, you can view the scan results in a browser.
For this, click ‘View results in my browser’. The action when confirmed will display the complete scan report, including all three tabs, in your default browser. The results of ‘Detailed View’ displayed in your browser differs from SaRA window in a way that the latter does not show a ‘Search’ option found in the former.
3] Sharing your scan results
SaRA allows users to share your scanning results with Microsoft as well.
Users who have an Office 365 account
If you sign in to SaRA by using an account in Office 365, the application will allow you to send your files to Microsoft. This can be helpful in times when you are working with a Microsoft Support engineer to get some assistance. Moreover, if you choose to send the files they will be securely uploaded.
Users who do not have an Office 365 account
For users who choose to sign in to SaRA via an account not supported by Office 365, there will be no option available to send files to Microsoft.
So, for instance, if you would still like to share your files, you will have to share your log files with your Helpdesk. For this, click ‘See all logs’ to open the folder that contains all the logs that are created by SaRA.
Now, you can copy the file from this folder to share with the person who is helping you to fix your Outlook issue.
Lastly, SaRA is not just made to fix Outlook issues for Office 365 or on-premises. It has also options for troubleshooting Dynamics, OneDrive and Skype for Business issues.
How do I fix Microsoft Outlook email problems?
The solutions depend on the error or problem you are getting while using the Outlook app. However, in most cases, you can use Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant to get it fixed. For your information, the Advanced Diagnostics option is pretty handy in solving Outlook problems.
How do I troubleshoot Outlook performance issues?
To troubleshoot Outlook performance issues, you need open Outlook in Safe Mode and check if you are getting the same issues or not. If yes, you need to repair the Outlook email profile first. Then, you can create a new Outlook profile. Finally, it is suggested to repair Outlook via the installer.
That’s all! Hope it helped you.
