Greetings, In Outlook 2003, I have all my e-mails stored in subfolders within "Personal Folders". In the morning, when I turn the computer on, launch Outlook, and try to expand the Personal Folders, I get the following error message in a pop-up: "Unable to expand the folder. The set of folders could not be opened. Access is denied. Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not being used." For the past month, I have seen that message some mornings, but not others. Before that, I never saw the message. I checked the .pst file as well as the folder it is stored in. Nothing appears to be write-protected or full. Sometimes, closing and reopening Outlook causes this problem to go away. Other times, it doesn't. I appreciate any advice. Thanks! Jen

Have you tried running the Detect and Repair in Outlook '03? That would be a good place to start.

Are you running through an Exchange Server? Life's more painless for the brainless.

Yes, it is an Exchange Server. t8ntlikly, I ran the Detect & Repair, so far so good, I'll see if the problem comes back tomorrow morning. Thanks for your replies so far. J

Ok... you are running on Exchange server, that means you have your personal folders (pst file) to handle the storage of your emails on your comptuer and not on the exchange server itself...You have to move your emails from your inbox to some folder in your personal folder for storage... Check the size of your pst file...Microsoft supposedly took the 2 Gb limit off on pst files in Outlook 2003, but we have seem pst files at about the 2 Gb size get "funky" and sometime loose data, can't open them...other undesirable things... If you are much over 1.5 Gb, I would create a new pst file and move some date from the first to the second pst file to reduce the size of the first pst file...then run the Detect Repair function on that file and see what you get...

Thanks, all. The size of my pst file is 194 MB: large, but nowhere near 2 GB. However, Detect & Repair seems to have done the trick (knock on wood) as the error message has not come back since last Wednesday when I ran it. I really appreciate your tips & will pass them on to our IT folks as I think some others here at work have had the same problem. Jen