Outlook 2007 Freezing Minimized
My earlier posts (here and here) on this topic mentioned the steps I have been taking to improve the responsiveness and performance of Outlook 2007. Well this one is to detail the relief that has come out of these steps. The patch I mentioned in the earlier posts has helped a lot. My Outlook is definitely less sluggish (to a point where it’s almost normal).
As for the problem with freezing of Outlook when the last email is being downloaded, after I reduced the size of my PST from over 2GB to a little below 1GB, the freezing has become a second as compared to a few seconds earlier.
I strongly recommend the following steps:
- Install the Microsoft Patch
- Reduce the size of your PST by archiving old emails, deleting non-important emails, dividing your emails into multiple archives.
- Compact the Size of your PST.
- Defragment your hard drive or at least the PST files (you can use contig from sysinternals to do that).
Do all this and I am sure that you will see an improvement in your Outlook performance. Oh yeah, as lots of people before me have said: DO NOT use RSS from within your Outlook. Turn it off. If you want a desktop aggregator use RSSBandit.
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July 19th, 2007 at 5:48 am
It would be great if you posted a an email address or web address where we could grip at Microsoft… but their servers might not be able to handle that load.
July 19th, 2007 at 9:43 am
heh heh
with all the shortcomings, I still like the software that MS comes out with…
September 7th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
try: Outlook | Tools | Options | Mail Setup and unchecking the “Hang up when send/receive is complete” box.
the Outlook Hangs problem hasn’t happened since I unchecked that box.
enjoy
Moty
September 7th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Hi Moty,
Hmmm.. anything to get it to work… so I tried your advice… and it didn’t work for me… it still hangs…
Of course, after I had followed your instructions, the funny part hit me… so thanks for the joke
And for anyone else, for me the best proven way so far is to bring the size of the PST to less than 1 GB…
October 3rd, 2007 at 1:53 am
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October 23rd, 2007 at 5:12 pm
I have been tryingto investiagte the freezign problemon my outlook 2007… however none of the blog ihave come accross decribes theproblem i have. In my case outlook freezes when I am creating an email. I have update using the MS patch however it still just hangs… does anyoene have any ideas why this may be happening and better still a solution? Thanks
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:38 pm
@Ian
Do you think it could be a plugin or an anti-virus program that is messing up your Outlook?
I suggest removing everything and then adding them one-by-one.
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Hi and thanks ….I was hoping it was something simple… now I am wondering why I bothered changing from 2003…
Using Norton 360 … sorry what is a plugin? ( a real novice I know)
Best
Ian
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:39 pm
Well, try turning off Norton and then work with Outlook and see if you notice better performance.
Also an Add-in (i called it a plugin, but add-in is more correct term) is something that you install to add some functionality to your Outlook.
You can see a list of add-ins that you have, go to the Tools Menu and then select the “Trust Center” Menu Option. The dialog box that opens has a section that is called “Add-ins”. When you click that, you will see a list of all addins installed on your Outlook.
What you can do then is that you can click on a button labeled as “Go” at the bottom of this dialog after selecting “COM Add-ins” in the list that is before the buttons.
This will open another dialog box where you will get a list of the installed add-ins and you can disable them one-by-one to see if your situation improves. So, to disable an add-in, simply uncheck the box next to it in this list and press ok, and close all dialog boxes. Restart Outlook and then test.
Please make sure that you remember what add-ins were checked originally because you would want to go back and enable them if they don’t improve things.
Hope that helps you out.
December 12th, 2007 at 10:50 am
[...] when my Outlook hangs momentarily on Send/Receive. I have blogged on how to reduce that problem here. After I installed the SP1, I feel as if there is a fractional improvement although that might be a [...]