Today we had a couple of reports from Chameleon-i users that our Outlook plugin had been disabled on the launch of Outlook 2010.

Further investigation revealed that the issue related to users applying the December update KB3114409 for Outlook 2010, Outlook 2010 may as a result only start in Safe Mode disabling plugins and extensions. Microsoft is aware of this issue and has pulled the update as a result.

Symptoms you may encounter are;

  • Outlook 2010 is loaded with the default settings.
  • Reading Pane is turned off.
  • Modified settings aren’t being retained upon restarting Outlook.
  • Add-ins are disabled.
  • The Quick Access Toolbar and Ribbon have been reset and can’t be customized.
  • Instant Search doesn’t work.

If you are affected by this, you can safely uninstall update KB3114409 from your computer as is doesn’t contain any security updates. After uninstalling it, restart your computer and Outlook 2010 will start normally again with your own settings. As the update has been removed from Windows Update, it will not automatically re-install.

Administrators can also deploy a Registry value to prevent Outlook 2010 from starting in Safe Mode instead of undoing the deployment of the update.