I've noticed that when I restart Vista I sometimes get a dialogue "The data file .... was not closed properly." when I fired up Outlook again.

It was driving me slowly mad (or actually driving me to use those extra 2 minutes to grab one more coffee!) but... I've found a solution... and it's really simple.

All you have to do is make sure Outlook has an open window - ie it's not minimized - when you hit shutdown or restart.

It appears that if Outlook isn't an active window then Vista is a little aggressive in shutting down and if Outlook doesn't respond quick enough then it just gets closed.

Now obviously this doesn't solve the problem of a crash, power cut or other hard stop, but when you're in control it's easy enough to work around.

I'm going to hunt to see if I can find a way to make Vista a little less understanding about Outlooks obsessive need to tidy up ;)