Why does my application window keep disappearing?

Question

Starting this morning, when my colleague opens Outlook on her Windows machine, splash screen will display, the icon in the taskbar will glow (as if the application was running) but no window would appear. We're able to make the window appear temporarily by shift-right-clicking the taskbar icon and selecting Maximize, but if we click on the title bar of that window, the window disappears again. Outlook does not appear in the Alt-Tab interface, but it is in the process manager.

The only other potential clue we see is the strange behavior of Dell Backup & Recovery. It's not visible in the taskbar, but if we use Alt-Tab to cycle through running programs, its green icon is ther with no name. Selecting that shows a white rectangle on the screen covering part of the desktop (it can't be moved, but Win-D will hide it). This might be entirely unrelated.

Any idea what would cause this? Is this a strange virus/trojan/something else?

Solution 1

When you are maximizing Outlook, it is positioning itself correctly on the screen. When you resize the window, Outlook is going out of the screen dimensions.

The easiest fix is to press Windows + Left Arrow and Windows + Right Arrow a few times. This will re-position and re-size the current window to fit various positions on the screen.

Solution 2

I believe it was the window positioning as well. I was having this exact same issue. What I did to fix was to cascade all windows, which got Outlook in the forefront but in a non-maximized state. Now I can change the window size and drag as well.

Comments

[DavidPostill]

Did you try a reboot?

[carpiediem]

Yeah, several times.

[DavidPostill]

Try Repair an Office application

[carpiediem]

That might have worked, but she wound up asking IT to reinstall Office completely. THanks for your help, in any case.

[Mattygabe]

I've had the same issue (except I am not on a Dell machine), and I attempted a Repair on Office 2013 but to no avail. Oddly enough, Outlook was running, I could click on its icon in the taskbar and ask it to open new Appointment or Email windows (which it would do), but the main Outlook window would never appear. I have multiple monitors, but tried disconnecting all of them, no avail. I will also be performing an Office re-install sigh

[carpiediem]

No, it wasn't a matter of window position. In fact Win+arrow didn't work at all, only the shift-right-click on the taskbar icon. In the end, she wound up reinstalling Office, so I can't try any other solutions.

[carpiediem]

I didn't have a chance to try that, but it's worth a shot for others.