Outlook 2003's Import and Export option grayed out

PROBLEM: Microsoft Outlook 2003's File > Import and Export menu item is grayed out so you can't import your old messages (perhaps you are migrating your data to a new computer).

SOLUTION: Pointed out to me by Henrik whom I had made contact with via Computing.Net's Office forum, here's the solution from Outlook's built-in Help:

Why is the Import/Export wizard unavailable?
If the Import/Export wizard is unavailable, verify that the language or country/region selected in the Regional and Language Options (Microsoft Windows XP) or Regional Options (Microsoft Windows 2000) dialog box in Control Panel matches the Outlook User Interface (UI) language. See Windows Help for more information.

In our case, the 2 languages we were dealing with were English and Simplified Chinese. In Henrik's case, English and Slovenian. On Windows XP, the key setting to change is under Start > Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Advanced tab > Language for non-Unicode programs. Since my colleague in Beijing had the Simplified Chinese version of Office installed on this English Windows XP system, he had to change that setting to Chinese (PRC).

Thanks, Henrik of Slovenia!

Here was my post on Computing.Net's Office forum on this problem. And here was Henrik's previous post on this exact problem which went unanswered but he eventually figured out on his own.

Posted by derek at December 23, 2004 09:14 AM