I have a job on my machine that will (weekly) backup any psts for a given profile in outlook. I've been able to write a job that shuts down any running instances of OL, backs up the PSTs and attempts to restart outlook on the machine. The problem is the last step. I have an "Execute task" whereby I point to the outlook exe (e.g. "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE". I always get one of two problems, both of which prevent me from SEEING outlook running:

1) I can see outlook.exe running in the task manager, but it is iconless and is not running in a context where I can use it (and the task in the job never ends)
2) I cannot see it in task manager and get an error in the job that regarding a context to execute

I want the task to kick off outlook and then end, how can I do this? I've even tried doing it via a batch file but usually see a #1 type of behavior

Thanks,

Outlook is a desktop application program and cannot be run in background mode. Execution in VisualCron is by default in background mode. The advantage with background mode is that it does not require a desktop (a logged in user).

In your case you must use Foreground mode. You change this in the main settings of the Task.

If you want to kick off and then end you need to write a batch script (which will fork off the process). Just write the path to the outlook.exe in the batch file. In a future version we will provide instant release of the file - currently we are waiting for exit codes and output but that is not interesting in your case.

---