Combining Windows Shortcuts -- Restarting Outlook through a shortcut

Question

Windows 10, Outlook 2013

Where I work, Outlook tends to lock up regularly, meaning I'm frequently killing it through task manager. I thought I could create a shortcut to restart it, but I can't get it to work.

I have a shortcut to open it, obviously - it works, and a shortcut to kill it, which works. When I combine them , it will only complete one action or other, instead of both. I based this shortcut on the info I've found here and online.

Batch scripts & powershell are NOT possible.

SEPARATELY, THESE 2 SHORTCUTS WORK ON THEIR OWN.

KILL --

C:\Windows\System32\taskkill.exe /F /IM outlook.exe

OPEN --

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "" /b "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\OUTLOOK.EXE"

or just:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\OUTLOOK.EXE"

COMBINING --

I've read that combining 2 shortcuts into one can be accomplished with && or &. I've seen different examples using each. I tried this approach:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k start "" /b C:\Windows\System32\taskkill.exe /F /IM outlook.exe && start "" /b "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\OUTLOOK.EXE"

This results in killing Outlook, but not opening a new instance.

If I add a pause before the && -- /t 3 && -- it will open another Outlook without killing the original instance.

Suggestions on how to combine both actions, kill Outlook then start Outlook?

Answer 1

You may consider using a batch file: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21386763/batch-file-to-kill-and-restart-not-responding-program

@echo off 
taskkill /im "Outlook.exe" /fi "STATUS eq NOT RESPONDING" /f >nul && start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\OUTLOOK.EXE"