Emailing from Excel (and others) says no MAPI client, ‘Old version of Outlook running’ or ‘No profile setup in Outlook’.

We had a good one today. Initially it was noticed a new install of Exchequer (accounting and stock system) on a brand new laptop would not allow dcuments to be emailed. Said MAPI was unavailable. Office 2013 had been installed from a standard ISO and a mail account and so profile was setup, available and working.

Then it was discovered that Excel would not allow sheets to be shared by email. This gave more useful error messages like ‘An older version of Outlook is running’ and ‘A profile has not been setup’.

Eventually it came down to the fact that this new Dell laptop (March 2019) now comes with Office 2016 Desktop Apps preinstalled. Even though I installed 2013 from an ISO, the app remained the default MAPI client. So it was trying to fire up the Outlook desktop app which had no profile. Also, Outlook 2013  was running so it was true when saying an older one was running.

The thing here is that the desktop apps do not show in running proceses individually, so no Outlook could be seen running. Also, they do not appear in the Programs list in Control Panel, so no older or newer versions appear to be present.

Fix: Settings>Apps and find the Office Desktop App and uninstall. Voila.

This was a two hour pain in the backside. Why can’t the most recently installed MAPI client become the default?