To be fair not all the crashes are Outlook's fault.
A lot of them are caused by other programs that want access to Outlook for some reason or another. For example your antimalware program will want to scan emails for viruses and maybe manage your spam too.
If these "plug-ins" are misbehaved then they can bring Outlook down with them. Sometimes just the plug-ins themselves disappear and leave Outlook intact. The problem then is having to constantly re-install the plug-in.
To be clear I am talking about Outlook 2007, that is what I am currently using, but the general steps I am outlining below do apply to older and newer versions of Outlook.
Microsoft know there are a lot of issues with Outlook and how plug-ins affect it. So they've built some useful things into Outlook itself AND written a tool or two to help you clean things up.
IMPORTANT: Before you start playing, backup your Outlook data!
Firstly, when Outlook does crash it can make a mess of the PST files where it keeps ALL your data...all of it!
The way to fix corrupted Outlook data files is to use Microsoft's SCANPST.EXE program - sometimes called the "Inbox Repair Tool". This link is to an exhaustive "how-to" for the tool from Microsoft themselves, so I won't reproduce it here.
However, you should run the SCANPST.EXE against all your PST data files every few months or so. Most people are likely to have an Outlook.pst and an Archive.PST file. Some will have more.
This scanning process can take quite some time and you can't have Outlook running while you are doing it. So do it Outside of work hours and when you don't urgently need to collect email.
SCANPST.EXE almost always finds errors so don't panic. It also quite often magically allows a crashing Outlook to start working again. Outlook often crashes on start-up because the data it is getting from the Outlook.PST in unintelligible to it.
Secondly, Outlook provides several ways to undo or disable the various customisations that plug-ins have made.
Outlook has a "Trust Center" and some command line switches which override and stop certain things happening. Troubleshooting these crashes can be a lengthy process of elimination by trial and error. Again, the link above provides exhaustive steps on how to do this.
The command line switch that worked like magic for me was "/cleanviews". It restored the way Outlook appears to defaults. I have since left the views at defaults and not yet lost my favourite plug-in.
The best strategy is to disable all plug-ins (except anti-virus) and perform a strategic subset of the command line switches to restore your Outlook to near-new status.
If Outlook still crashes disable everything including antivirus plug-ins, perform more aggressive command line clearing and rescan all PST files in case recent crashes have re-introduced corruption.
If Outlook then behaves itself you can either live with it the way it is or slowly, one-by-one turn the plug-ins back on at the rate of one per day and see if Outlook starts crashing again on the day one of them is re-enabled. That will most likely be your trouble child. Disable it for good!
As I said, fixing Outlook problems can be lengthy and the causes greatly varied.
Outlook on Vista seems particularly problematic and potentially unfixable without a re-install of Office in its entirety or worse still the Vista operating system itself.
For my money it would be better to go to an alternate email program, task manager and calendar than re-install the operating system to fix an Outlook problem.
If you aren't completely scarred by Microsoft and want an Outlook like email program then Windows Live Mail is quite good and free. Thunderbird is the best non-Microsoft email program in my opinion and also free.
Personally, I'm with Google app's now and using Gmail.
Good luck!
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