Fix For Outlook Out of Office Assistant Disabled (Windows)

When you click Out of Office Assistant on the Tools menu in Microsoft Outlook, you may receive the following error message:

The command is not available. See the program documentation about how to use this extension.

To resolve the problem, you can take the following steps:

1. Open Outlook.
2. Click on Help.
3. Click on About Microsoft Outlook.
4. Click on the Disabled Items entry.

You will see a Disabled Items window open, with the following information within it:

• The items below were disabled because they prevented Outlook from functioning correctly.
• 
  
Please note that you may have to restart Outlook for these changes to take place.
• 
  
Select the ones you wish to re-enable.

If you see "Addin: outex.dll (outex.dll)" listed, click on it to highlight it and then click on the Enable button. Then click on the Close button. Then click on the OK button to close the About Microsoft Office Outlook window.

You should then be able to click on Tools and then Out of Office Assistant to modify the out of office setting.

If you however do not see a "Disabled Items" entry, Microsoft has released an article on a possible resolution:
warning: SBWH does not condone modifying the Windows registry and doing so could cause irreparable harm to your computer
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;823472