"Unable to open this item" error message when you open an appointment or a meeting request in Outlook Calendar

This article was previously published under Q189841

Symptoms

When you attempt to open an appointment or meeting request in your Outlook Calendar, the following error may occur:

Unable to open this item.

Closing and reopening the Outlook client and/or recreating the meeting request has no effect on this error message.

This error can occur if any of the following become corrupt:

If deleting and recreating the items that cannot be opened does not correct the problem, perform the following steps:

Back up all mailbox information by downloading messages to a PST. Personal Folders can be added to your profile by selecting Services from the Tools menu and choosing Add.
In the Outlook client, select Import and Export from the File menu.
Follow the Import and Export Wizard and select Export to a File.
Select a file name and select Calendar as the file to Export from.
Delete the Calendar folder; to do this, start an Exchange Client from the command line by typing exchng32. The calendar folder can be deleted from the Exchange Client because it is viewed as a standard folder and not a required Calendar folder.
Recreate the Calendar folder by starting Outlook from the command line using Outlook /resetfolders.
Move all messages back from the PST to the mailbox. From the File menu, choose Import and Export and follow the Import and Export Wizard to import the Calendar data from the file created in steps 3 and 4 above.

Keywords: KB189841, kbopenfile, kbcalendar, kbprb

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