Outlook chokes on an email message

I was using Outlook on a laptop when it crashed.

 

Restarting it produced this:

 

 

 

That didn’t look good. I started it in safe mode. No go.

I went to another machine, and Outlook crashed there, too. Looks like a bad email message. I figured that trying other instances of Outlook would eventually leave me without a working PC email client, so I picked up an iPad, which didn’t seem to be affected, and deleted all the recent email messages.

That took care of any problem message on the Exchange server.

Then I started Outlook in safe mode again on the laptop (you have to navigate to the path containing the program):

 

Now it worked. I restarted in normal mode. I did the same thing with the other computer.

This is not the first time that an email message has crashed Outlook — I think it’s the preview part of the program that goes nuts — but it is the most serious crash. Outlook ought to have better defensive programming practices. Making your customers use a non-Microsoft email program to bail themselves out is not a great workaround.