I can't seem to track down a straight answer on this.  I have some user XP/Vista machines that are unable to connect to Exchange suddenly starting a week or two ago.  I have been through a lot of different things, but am currently at the point where I'd like to analyze some of the logs that Outlook creates on their machine.  Is there a utility I can use to format/decode the .ETL logs that Outlook creates?

I've found many articles and posts talking about these files, but none that really talk about how to do it for these particular files generated by the client's outlook.  I can load them into event viewer, or get a dump from tracerpt just fine, but it's just a bunch of empty events.  I can open the ETL in notepad and see a lot more info hiding in there.   I see our exchange server and RPC proxy names and even some error numbers.

I have other things I can be trying to fix this problem, but I hate the feeling that I'm hunting around in the dark while these logs might point to an exact cause.

As far as I know, there is no publishing utility tool in Internet to view the ETL logs. If you want to find the root according to the ETL logs, you'd better create a Microsoft support ticket to get more help.

Of course you can post the ETL content here and other partners who read the forums regularly can either share their knowledge with you. Please do remember that hide the sensitive/privacy information when you post the log.

Feel free to post back. Thanks.

Tony Chen
TechNet Community Support
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Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.

• Marked as answer by Sonic Colonic Monday, November 19, 2012 2:24 PM

Thanks for the info.  I'll pursue the NetMon route instead.  Kinda stinks that Outlook provides these helpful logs but you have to open a MS ticket to utilize them.  The other Outlook logs can be helpful too, but they aren't verbose enough about connectivity information.

Not that it will make any difference in the world, but I agree Sonic Colonic.  Having a log file I can't read is frustrating to say the least.

I know this is old, but maybe I can help someone else.  The ETL files can be viewed in the event viewer.  On the saved logs folder right click, pick open file and browse to your log files and you can view them.

You helped me! thanks for that info.

I tried the MS Message Viewer with outlook etl files but it was overcomplicated.

Well... It's interesting to know that you can open it... But it doesn't actually seem to provide any properly useful information.  Just a log time, event number, and info/warning/error.  Have we any way of decoding what these things actually mean?

A tool by name "Timber" helps to view .etl files of outlook. I'm trying to find it on net but no luck. If you find please post the link to download.