If a program has simple code for interacting with Outlook (such as 365) with a create form code to generate a new blank email form, generally this works fine.
For some users though, they also happen to have the "Office" MS Store app installed and at some point an update occurs related to this app and somewhere in the backend the file path the code is directed to use in order to reach the appropriate OUTLOOK.exe to generate the form, gets changed, resulting it the program dead-ending and being unable to find Outlook to interact with it.
What was found previously is that it was getting directed to the C:\Program Files\WindowsApps folder. Inside would be an "outlook desktop" app folder with a long version number included in the folder name. Figured something in the registry is pointing it at this instead of any other usual file path to Outlook. At some point, an update occurs to the app, or something related to Office, there's a new version number, and a new folder is generated in WindowsApps. The old one is cleared out, but the registry fails to update this information, so programs trying to interact with Outlook still get directed to the old Outlook version folder, which is now empty, and the program dead-ends and hits a non-specific .NET and KERNELBASE error, but this is the root cause of that occurring.
Tried several times to find where to correct this in the registry and still come up with nothing. The usual solution given to this issue is to have the system re-imaged WITHOUT that "Office" app, just the full installed version of Office and the problem is removed at that point.
Would anyone have any insight about where, specifically, the registry would need to be corrected to get it off of this kind of file path and what it normally should be pointing at? Prefer to find a solution other than having to re-image a system when this comes up.
Thanks