This is how I solved a problem of Microsoft Outlook 2010 “Trying to Connect” for several days.
- I verified I could connect to the Exchange Server from another machine using Outlook Web App.
- I verified network connectivity to the Microsoft Exchange server.
- I killed the OUTLOOK.EXE process and restarted Outlook.
- I stopped the Windows Search service and restarted Outlook. (So far, nothing helped.)
- I killed Microsoft Communicator 2007 R2 and restarted Outlook.
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The last step, killing Communicator, helped and then Outlook connected and updated all folders.
The reason I tried to stop Communicator is using Process Explorer I found Communicator was locking files in C:\Users\username\appdata\local\microsoft\outlook, which I was trying to rename in case there was a corrupt file there.
Rebooting should have resolved the issue, but I couldn’t reboot because I needed another application to keep running. Searching on Google shows other people had other causes for the same “Trying to Connect” problem.
System: Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Office 2010.
Thank you, killing the communicator/Lync solved it for me.