Outlook Troubleshooting - Enable Logging

Scenario 

There may be times when you are  troubleshooting Outlook issues, but you would like to have more information about what Outlook is doing in the background.  This is often the case when something happens in Outlook that isn’t right, but there aren’t any popup error messages.

Application Log

The first place you can look is in your Windows Application log.

Go to Start > Run > eventvwr.

Navigate to the Application Log and then select Filter Current Log.

Under Filter Current Log, select the drop down menu near Event sources and select Outlook.

This will give you all native event logs for Outlook from that log.

But sometimes you want more detailed logging.  If you can’t find anything in the Application Log, you can enable Outlook Troubleshooting Logging.

Outlook Logging

1. Open Outlook.
2. Go to the File tab.

3. Select Options.

4. Then under the Advanced section, you just place a check mark by “Enable Troubleshooting Logging”.

It won’t start logging until you close Outlook and reopen it, but after that you should get some additional logging that may help track down the issue.

NOTE: These logs may slow down Outlook, so if you notice a slowdown of Outlook after enabling these logs, you can always disable them.

After you have enabled the logging and after you reproduced the issue on the users machine, you can go to the following location to get the resulting logs:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp

Below are a list of logs that are created in this folder and in various sub-directories.

Type of log file	Subfolder	File name	Outlook 2013	Outlook 2010	Outlook 2007
Outlook Autodiscover	Temp	olkdisc.log	No	Yes	Yes
Exchange ActiveSync	Temp/EASLogFiles	datafilename.bin datafilename.xml	Yes	No	No
Availability service	Temp/OlkAS	date-time-fb.log	No	No	Yes
Availability service, OOF, and meeting suggestion	Temp/OlkAS	date-time-AS.log	No	Yes	No
Protection rules	Temp/OlkAS	date-time-PB4S.log	No	Yes	No
Unified messaging	Temp/OlkAS	date-time-UM.log	No	Yes	No
Unified messaging configuration	Temp/OlkAS	date-time-UMCFG.log	No	Yes	No
Out-of-office	Temp/OlkAS	date-time-oof.log	No	No	Yes
Meeting suggestion	Temp/OlkAS	date-time-ms.log	No	No	Yes
Outlook calendar	Temp/OlCalLogs	OLKCalLog_date-time.etl	Yes	Yes	Yes
Transport	Temp/Outlook Logging	opmlog.log	Yes	Yes	Yes
SMTP	Temp/Outlook Logging	emailaddress-Outgoing-date-time.log	Yes	Yes	Yes
POP3	Temp/Outlook Logging	emailaddress-Incoming-date-time.log	Yes	Yes	Yes
IMAP	Temp/Outlook Logging	IMAP-emailaddress-Incoming-date-time.log	Yes	Yes	Yes
HTTP DAV	Temp/Outlook Logging	HTTP-emailaddress-date-time.log	No	Yes	Yes
Outlook Hotmail Connector	Temp/Outlook Logging	OLC-emailaddress-date-time.log OLC-date-time.log emailaddress.txt	No	Yes	Yes
Out-of-office	Temp/Outlook Logging	date-time-oof.log	No	Yes	No
Outlook profile	Temp/Outlook Logging	PROF_OUTLOOK_threadID_action_year.month.day_hour.minute.second.txt	Yes	Yes	No
Outlook sharing engine	Temp/Outlook Logging	Sharing Enginedate .log	Yes	Yes	Yes
Outlook-Windows Desktop Search indexing	Temp/Outlook Logging	datafilename.log	Yes	Yes	Yes
Outlook advanced ETW	Temp/Outlook Logging	Outlook-date-time.etl	Yes	Yes	No
Mailtips	Temp/Outlook Logging	date-time-mailtips.log	No	Yes	No
Free busy	Temp/Outlook Logging	date-time-fb.log	No	Yes	No
Outlook Sharing Engine	Temp/Outlook Logging	Sharing Enginedatetime-mailtips.log	Yes	Yes	Yes
Outlook first run process	Temp/Outlook Logging	firstrun.log	Yes	Yes	Yes

For more information on this, you can go here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-is-the-Enable-logging-troubleshooting-option-0fdc446d-d1d4-42c7-bd73-74ffd4034af5