Forum Discussion
Outlook Classic Locked Offline
I bought a new Lenovo laptop with Windows 11 in early 2024
. In April I bought MS Office 2021 Pro Plus (Product Key: M9PBR-NQFQY-BJXQP-TBQYJ-WB8M9) which has run perfectly, including on 28 July 2025, but when I opened it the next day it was locked offline and would not toggle to online. On the Send / Receive ribbon, both Download Cancel All and Preferences Offline icons have a red cross (see attached screen shot), as does the Outlook icon on the Windows task bar.
I tried Quick Repair, which didn't work and then Online Repair. The problem remained, but my whole Office Suite has now been 'downgraded' to MS Office Home and Business 2016.
Two problems and I haven't a clue how to proceed.
5 Replies
Thank you Kurapya. I have a mixture of .pst and .ost data files (POP and IMAP). I could not find any .ost files identifiable as created offline. Starting Outlook while holding down the control key gave only the option of starting in safe mode. I did try run 'outlook.exe /resetnavpaneto', but it didn't fix the problem Thanks again though for the suggested solution.
Question, where did you buy your license from? It could be a pirated version and those tend to behave that way when it's not legitimate. I'm not saying it is, but that's typical...pirated versions give a lot of weird issues.
If you did buy it from Microsoft direct, then I would do a full uninstall of 2016, restart pc and then install 2021 again. If that fails, then something else is wrong. Product support for 2021 has some cost behind it from Microsoft, so you might be better off buying 365 subscription.
Thanks for your reply Lisa. I bought through a company called Cheap Training and the app was downloaded via a link starting 'https://officecdn.microsoft.com/...' The software was activated by phone, through a customer ID comprising a series of 5-number groups. There was no option for a re-installation. I do have installation disks for MS Office 2010, left over from a previous and now scrapped laptop.
Cheap Training is most likely the problem then, old license from an enterprise version or something else happened. I would upgrade to 365 subscription. Then it should work for you. Office 2010 is in outdated and most likely will not install and if it does, you're going back in time 16 years. Not many email accounts will work with 2010, security upgrades and whatnot.
Close Outlook, delete the offline files in the path %localappdata%\Microsoft\Outlook\.ost, hold down the Ctrl key when restarting and select online mode, then runoutlook.exe /resetnavpaneto reset the configuration.
