Outlook Gives Flashing Pop-up Window

Question

Hello,

I recently purchased a new laptop running windows 11. Every time I seem to open outlook I keep on getting a pop-up window flashing on my screen. It is extremely annoying and it is blank (doesn't say anything) so I am not sure what the error is. I cannot locate outlook within control panel to uninstall and install a fresh copy. Restarting the application and/or computer also yields no results. Does anyone have some advice?

Thank you,
William

Answer 1

Hi @William Politis-Barber ,

Welcome to our forum!

What's the version of your Outlook? (File > Office Account > About Outlook). Please make sure you have upgraded your Outlook to the latest version.

According to the screenshot you provided, since it is blank, I can't be sure what pop-up is. It is suggested that you could try to create a new profile(Control Panel>Mail>Show Profiles>add) and add the account for testing to check if there are some differences.

I cannot locate outlook within control panel to uninstall and install a fresh copy.

We can debug by uninstalling Office via Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features, as shown in the below figure.

Hope the above help!

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Answer 2

I had the same problem. I was able to get the flashing window to stop using the registry settings posted by @Narve Andreas Nordås on Oct 12 2022.

However, when the Windows Security popup window was displayed, I entered my password and selected OK, the window would disappear, and about 30 seconds later the Windows Security popup window would be displayed again. Through trial-and-error I figured out this was likely due to me having enabled Two-Factor Authentication (2FA): it appears to have accepted my password and failed on 2FA. I opened the Microsoft Authenticator app on my phone, then on my laptop in Outlook selected "Needs password", in the Windows Security popup I entered my password and selected OK (which failed again), and then the Microsoft Authenticator app displayed that I need to use an "app password" (for some app or device, but it doesn't say which app or device...), and displayed an app password to use. I typed that app password into Outlook's Windows Security popup, and it accepted the password.

Rants:
This user experience totally sucked. It cost me about two hours of billable time, and judging from the thread there are others in the same situation. Enhanced security provides no value if people can't figure it out. I have 40 years of experience on Microsoft technology and am a former MVP and Regional Director: what is the causal user supposed to do? How do we get this feedback to the product team?

The "Accepted Answer" in this thread seems like it has solved the problem(s) for no one; why is it even considered an answer at all, other than to keep the reputation of the "moderator" artificially inflated? That doesn't help anyone experiencing the problem.

Answer 3

In my case I needed to add these two Registry settings:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Identity, create a DWORD value named EnableADAL and set it to zero.
Under the same registry key, create a DWORD value named DisableADALatopWAMOverride and set it to 1

After a reboot the flashing windows allowed me to reenter the credentials and log in again in Outlook.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/outlook/outlook-password-prompt-disappears-quickly/m-p/793317

Answer 4

I have the same issue and the suggestion did not fix it.

Answer 5

I am having the same issue running Office 2019 but the flashing of the window opening and closing stops after a minute or so. The problem only started recently - not sure exactly when but about a week ago so may be related to an update. There are posts about a similar thing going back many years saying it has something to do with an office background task file but the file mentioned does not exist in my install folder.

It looks like it is a recurring issue Microsoft know something about so can somebody post the real solution please.