Greyed out button to Reply, Forward and create New Email
The button for New, Reply, Reply to All and Forward buttons are all greyed out.
Any reason why that would happen all of a sudden?
This could happen for two main reasons;
- Outlook hasn't been activated yet or your trial has expired.
- You have no email account configured (anymore).
Luckily, it is easy to recover from either scenario.
Outlook hasn't been activated yet or your trial has expired
When your version of Outlook hasn't been activated yet or your trial has expired, Outlook will go into “Reduced functionality mode”.
In this mode, Outlook is basically “Read Only” and you won’t be able to create any new items or modify existing ones. You are however still able to export your data if you want to.
To recover from this scenario, make sure you have activated your license for Outlook:
- Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007
Help-> Activate Product... - Outlook 2010
File-> Help
If you haven’t activated Outlook yet, a message is displayed here. - Outlook 2013
File-> Office Account
If you haven’t activated Outlook yet, a message is displayed here.
If your trial version has expired you'll need to buy an Outlook license if you want to continue using Outlook.
You have no email account configured (anymore)
When you have no mail account configured in Outlook, the Reply, Forward and create New Email button might still be available to you, but you’ll no longer see a Send button to actually send the message or you’ll get a message “No valid email accounts are configured”.
To recover from this scenario, make sure you have at least 1 account configured in Outlook. To configure an account choose:
- Outlook 2003
Tools-> E-mail Accounts…-> option: Add a new e-mail account - Outlook 2007
Tools-> Account Settings…-> button: Add… - Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013
File-> section Info-> Account Settings-> Account Settings…-> Add…
