Troubleshoot Outlook Using Email Transaction Logging

Microsoft Outlook’s user-friendly tools and features allow users to handle their multiple email accounts easily and efficiently. But what if you get a puzzling popup error message on your computer screen? You may now be completely clueless as to what to do next. In such a situation, when you don’t have any idea what really happened and what caused the error, the best option is to look into the log that Outlook had created automatically. Outlook creates a detailed list of all the activities in its log file which helps its users to track unusual activities taking place within the Outlook. By looking into this log data, you can pinpoint the problem yourself or at least show it to someone who has some knowledge about it.
Outlook logs all activities including its communication with Exchange, POP, SMTP, IMAP and Hotmail
servers. Below are the troubleshooting steps for Outlook problems with transaction logging.

How to turn on email logging for Outlook troubleshooting

• Launch the Microsoft Outlook on your computer.
• From the toolbar menu, click on “Tools” and then select “Options”.
• When you get the “Options” window, click on “Other” tab.
• Select “Advanced Options”.
• Check to see if “Enable logging troubleshooting” or “Enable mail logging troubleshooting” is enabled. If it’s not enabled, mark the checkbox beside it. Click “OK” twice when it prompts to.
• Now exit the windows and restart Microsoft Outlook.

You need to check if you still have the same problem persisting. Try to send or receive email and check if it reproduces the error. If it generates the same error, go back and uncheck “Enable logging troubleshooting” or “Enable mail logging troubleshooting” to disable it.

How to find the log file

Finding the log file is a bit more tedious task as compared to enabling or disabling the transaction logging.

• Go to “Start” menu and click “Run”.
• Type “%temp%” into the Open text field and click “OK”.
• From the “Temp” folder, locate the folder for POP and SMTP. Locate the file “OPMLog.log”. This is the log file for POP and SMTP.
• Locate the “Outlook Logging” folder within the Temp folder and open it.
• Open IMAP folder and locate the files, “imap0.log”, “imap1.log”. These are the log files for IMAP.
• Open the “Hotmail” folder within the folder “Outlook Logging”.
• Locate the files “http0.log”, “http1.log” which are the log files for Hotmail service.

These log files help you to find the exact reasons for many Outlook problems which then in turn help you fix those problems.