Outlook 2003 "the operation failed" error

Clarifications

I'm not sure why you think you can't disable Word. Under Tools/Options/Mail Format, uncheck the "Use Microsoft Word 2003...." options. Then set the message type to "Rich Text". You/he can then format the note with any font/color you want. Frankly, IMNSHO, using Word as the e-mail editor causes more problems than it's worth. Fr example, I've found that if you use Word, you lose the ability to insert hyperlinks to files in your e-mails...

BTW, 5GB is a large mailbox.... Does he *really* need it that large?? One thing that affects the performance of Outlook is the number of e-mail items you have. This actually is more important than the actual size of the mailbox.

Hank Arnold

Have you checked in Active Directory to see the limit on the Mailbox size?

Disable all add-ins in Word and Outlook and close any other programs that might be using or linked to either Word or Outlook. If the problem does not occur after doing this, you will know that there is a conflict with one of the programs/add-ins you just closed.

I had this happen to me once on a Windows 2000 + Office XP system. My problem turned out to be related to Acrobat Professional. After disabling the Outlook Acrobat add-in, the problem disappeared. I made the following change in the registry:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\PDFMOutlook.PDFMOutlook]
"LoadBehavior"=dword:00000002

Good luck!

NEW PROFILE
------------

create a new profile and configure the account again..
i hope u got me..
CTRL panel-->mail-->show profiles--->
new profie..>add a new account--->made that profile as default.

DISABLE ADDINS
---------------

make sure ur addins are not integrated with outlook.

DETECT AND REPAIR
--------------------

help->detect and repair in outlook

try these steps.You will SUCCEED.

thanks people,
vamsi

If he can send and reply via OWA, it's not the exchange server.

If it's only OUTLOOK, create his profile in another PC. If everything works, we know now, it's related to this PC only.Please uninstall ( not disable) any third party software like SKYPE etc., which would grab the contact list. Restart Outlook or PC if possible!!

I feel your frustration as well. I'm getting the same symptoms with 2 colleagues in the office.
I replaced the machines, recreated the desktop profiles, created the outlook profile and still no luck.
The only way to fix it is to close all outlook windows and restart it again, but as you can imagine, that's a pain when you have 8 emails opened.
I've searched high and low for a fix, even installed SP3 which didnt do anything.

Please let me know if you find a fix.

I have had this problems for a while:
I found that FINDER.EXE was the culprit.
For instance, when searching for and then opening a contact,
FINDER.EXE does not close down at the end of the process.
It stays open and cause the failure message.
When closed manually through Task manager, Outlook functions as normal.
I have recreated and tested the situation multlple times with same result.
Fix may be specific to my setup, but better than rebotting which was only other option. May be helpful for others, or lead to a
proper fix.
Geoffrey in Australia

This happens when you have installed office 2003 over office 2007. Even when uninstalling office 2007, which usually is bundled as a trial version on prebuilt oem machines, it leaves certain files in the system which mess up the outlook profile.

Search your system for mapisvc.inf, you will find a couple of them. close outlook, delete the profile from the mail icon in control panel, and delete or rename these mapisvc.inf files, and restart outlook, it will then say that it is running through the configuration process again. There, fixed!

I had a similar problem. When I removed Word as my HTML editor I got the same "The operation failed" message only pointing to "Outlook" instead "Word". I later saw a post in another forum that kind of pointed me in the direction of the "Contacts" since I was not experiencing the same issue with addresses in our company's Global Address book.

I decided to recreate the user's profile and exported his Contacts to the desktop. When I recreated his profile and went to import the csv file I got a different error, "A file error has occurred in the Comma Separated Values (Windows) translator while initializing a translator to build a field map". When I went to view the csv file in Excel it contained the header info but was devoid of contacts. This pointed me back to the contacts again. I had the user systematically delete one e-mail address at a time from his e-mail message until we finally isolated what appeared to be a single corrupt contact and the message with multiple contacts finally went through.

This happened to me while travelling -- couldn't reply, forward, or compose a new message. I restarted the laptop to no effect. Running Outlook's repair tool fixed the problem for only a short time. But then I stopped the out of office reply, and all went back to normal. Later on I reactivated it out of curiosity, and Outlook still works fine.

I found this thread while searching for any information about the "The Operation Failed" error that I was getting when attempting to send an email attachment via Outlook 2003 using the Send To... Mail Recipient function in Windows Explorer.

Several people here have identified this error with totally different causes in a variety of situations. Clearly the error message is totally useless since it does not provide any specific information (not even one of MS's cryptic error codes).

In my case, it doesn't matter wether Outlook is open or not. Starting from Windows Explorer, I select one or more files (total around 1 MB), right click, and choose Send To Mail Recipient. Up until earlier this week, this would open Outlook (if not already open) and create a new email message with the files attached, ready for me to add the addresses and change the subject line from "Emailing: xxx" to something more useful. Suddenly this process started giving me the "The Operation Failed" error message almost every time. If the files being attached are pictures, I get the size dialog box first, THEN the error message as soon as I click Attach. If the files are not pictures, I get the error message as soon as I click Send To Mail Recipient.

The mailbox has exactly 3 Messages (totalling about 3 MB) in the Sent Items folder and all the other folders are empty.

If I open Outlook myself, create a new email myself, then drag-&-drop the files to attach everything works as it should.

I am running Office 2003 under Windows 7. This configuration has worked for nearly two years. I suspect that the last Windows Update is somehow responsible (that is the only thing that has changed on this machine)

You just need to enable the "User Cached Exchange Mode" for your mail so that you will not get those problem again

for details check tis out : http://osconfig.blogspot.in/2012/08/operation-failed-outlook-error.html