I've got the same problem and it is driving me mad (not least because it
seems to be related to me not being able to sync my Palm either!).

Running:
Windows 98 SR-2
Outlook 2000 SP-3

The initial symptom that I actually noticed was that if I made changes to
my Palm, the sync failed when it came to update my Contacts in Outlook. All
other combinations worked (e.g. new contact in Outlook went happily to PDA,
just it couldn't do incoming records).

Then I noticed that if I tried to enter a telephone number, Outlook would
freeze immediately after I left the cell (i.e. at the point that I would
expect the irritating 'how is this number formatted' prompt to appear).

Actions taken this evening to try to fix it:
Detect and Repair activated from Outlook
Reinstall Office activated from Office 2000 Pro CD1
Deleted my Outlook.pst profile and restarted from scratch

I suspect that the Hotsync problem is also related to this - what I see
when that is running is that the Sync software identifies the records that
need to be transfered from the PDA and then suddenly has issues contacting
Outlook. Doing Ctrl-Alt-Delete reveals that Outlook is 'Not Responding'.

I've also tried doing a hard reset on the Palm, reinstalling the Palm
software and getting the latest version of PocketMirror, although I'm
fairly confident that the problem is in Outlook.

I can't pinpoint what would have started to cause this. The only software
that I can think of that I have recently installed would be the Vodafone
Mobile Connect v3 software and WinFax Pro. Either of those on your system
Jeanne???

Please help - sanity is at stake here  :-)

Podge