Some of you might have the problem of the Outlook client crashing when loading. I read an interesting posting on the official MS CRM Forum, and I have cut-n-pasted it here for your pleasure! It is a great tip, thanks a lot to Mike Sullivan at Quest Business Solutions!
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Tired of getting CRM Outlook client errors. “An error occurred loading
Microsoft CRM functionality. Try restarting Microsoft Outlook or
contact your system admin if errors persist”

I’ve had the problem at two clients since Feb and finally solved it!
The symptoms are that every other time you open Outlook CRM client
installed, you get the above error and the toolbar is disabled. I’ve
read just about every posting out there and tried them all, but they
just weren’t the right fix for me.

I would consider this a definite bug in the crmaddin.dll file. The
problem is simple: When the crmaddin.dll file is loading the Outlook
client GUI using the isv.config.xml file, if it runs into an “empty
menu” (a menu with not menuitems below to click on), it will fail to
create that menu on every other attempt, and stops processing the XML
file, so it doesn’t load the toolbar..and you get the error box “An
error occurred loading Microsoft CRM functionality. Try restarting
Microsoft Outlook or contact your system admin if errors persist”

The problem is easy to identify (and fix) if you look in the
isv.config.xml file and have something like I did at the first client:

<MenuBar>
<!– Custom Menus that appear between the Goto Menu and the Help
Menu –>
<CustomMenus>
<Menu Title=”My Custom Menu”>
</Menu>
</CustomMenus>
</MenuBar>

To fix it, just remove the empty menu.

However, it’s not so obvious in the sample below…..

<MenuBar>
<!– Custom Menus that appear between the Goto Menu and the Help
Menu –>
<CustomMenus>
<Menu Title=”My Custom Menu”>
<MenuItem Title=”My Workplace”
Url=”http://crm/c360/MyWorkPlace/redirect.htm” WinMode=”0″
Client=”OutlookLaptopClient” AvailableOffline=”false” />
<MenuItem Title=”My Workplace”
Url=”/c360/MyWorkPlace/redirect.htm” WinMode=”0″
Client=”Web,OutlookWorkstationClient” AvailableOffline=”false” />
<MenuItem Title=”My Summary”
Url=”/c360/Summary/redirect.htm” WinMode=”0″
Client=”Web,OutlookWorkstationClient” AvailableOffline=”false” />
<MenuItem Title=”My Summary”
Url=”http://crm/c360/Summary/redirect.htm” WinMode=”0″
Client=”OutlookLaptopClient” AvailableOffline=”false” />
<MenuSpacer />
<MenuItem Title=”c360 Products”
Url=”http://www.c360.com/products.aspx” WinMode=”0″
Client=”OutlookLaptopClient” AvailableOffline=”false” />
</Menu>
</CustomMenus>
</MenuBar>

In the 2nd sample above, what’s not apparent is that there are no
MenuItems that are Available Offline – all are false. So, if the
Outlook Laptop Client goes offline, the custom Menu is left empty, and
the error occurs while the user is offline, and will disappear when the
user goes online.

As a workaround, I made sure that at least one Menu item was available
offline by changing the following:
<MenuItem Title=”c360 Products”
Url=”http://www.c360.com/products.aspx” WinMode=”0″
Client=”OutlookLaptopClient” AvailableOffline=”true” />

Viola! No more problem…and a bit more advertising for c360.

Disclaimer: I just used c360 as my example, as this problem is not
related to c360 products, rather to modifications made to the
isv.config.xml file and what I feel is a bug in the crmaddin.dll file.

Michael Sullivan
www.questnbs.com
Quest Business Solutions

— END

Thanx again Mike. Great tip!

Gustaf