Friday, October 28, 2016

[Fix] Outlook Error: 3219. Server. An error occurred in looking up the user's information in mserv.

You've been happily using Outlook 2010 (or 2007) with a Hotmail.com, Outlook.com, MSN.com or Live.com email address for . . . well . . . forever.  It's worked mostly fine for years.

Sometime in the last few days it stopped working.  You can see that your account is fine if you log in via a browser, and it works on your phone - but Outlook on your PC suddenly decided you no longer exist.

If you click the error notification in the bottom status bar in Outlook, you see one or more of the following errors:

There is an error synchronizing your mail account. Please verify your account is configured correctly by first accessing your mail on the web.  Error: 3219. Server. An error occurred in looking up the user's information in mserv.

Error with Send/Receive.
There was an error synchronizing your folder hierarchy. Error : 80041004.

“Task ‘your email address’ reported error (0x8004102A)
‘Error with Send/Receive’ 



Several MS sources on these errors tell you to try a tricky schedule of recreating a folder you might or might not have lost, etc etc.  It fails to help.  Removing the account and adding it back in also fails.

What's probably happened is that your MSN/Hotmail/Live/Outlook email account was just migrated to the new email servers on Microsoft's side.  You may or may not have received a notification recently that this was about to happen.  I certainly did not receive any such notice.  If this is the case, you can fix it easily.

1) In Outlook, remove the account (Tab "File", select Accounts, highlight the offending account and remove it)

2) Close Outlook

3) In Control Panel, Programs and Features, find and remove the Outlook Hotmail Connector (Also called the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector)


4) Reboot your PC

5) Open Outlook and add your account - after it succeeds, it will likely tell you to close Outlook and re-open.  Do what it says.

Ta da!

Why?  Because when your account was migrated recently, the new email servers no longer need or want the old MAPI based Outlook Hotmail Connector.  They're using a slim version of Exchange for Office 365 now.  Which Outlook 2007 and 2010 support natively without the special add-on connector.  But the add-on connector won't let go when you try to create the account, so away it goes.