Error When Sorting Inbox from Outlook 2007

**Ian Wilson** · 05-03-2007

I’m using Outlook 2007 since couple of months and there was no problem. Today, for the first time when I tried to Sort my Inbox as per Sender, I suddenly received the following error message:

“The messaging interface has returned an unknown error”

Don’t know why it is not allowing me sort the inbox with any attribute. Everytime I get that same error message and preview pane gets cleared. Do someone has come through this problem ? Any solution for this please?

**techman** · 06-03-2007

There might some unknown problem with outlook’s system files. I think you need to run the Office Diagnostic tool. Just launch Outlook, click Tools and click Office Diagnostics. It will find and repair the problem automatically.

**sbobde** · 08-03-2010

This looks like an old issue - but, I encountered the exact same issue recently too, using MS Outlook 2007.

1. For the issue regarding the display of "NONE" and other fields showing up blank, incidentally, a restart (apparently after a recent MS System update) worked for me.
2. For the issue about the error while trying to sort on the From or Subject fields, I did notice, that this was happening only in the Inbox folder. (a bit strange!)

I did try the Inbox repair tool (scanpst.exe as outlined here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/287497), and it detected errors. Fortunately, it was also able to repair the errors for me, and when I restarted Outlook after that, things worked fine for me!

Oh, btw, I had setup my Exchange Account to deliver emails to a .pst (rather, than the default .ost). No particular reason - just that I had been using PST ever since.