Users are reporting that Outlook 2007 is slow – much slower than Outlook 2003, which it is meant to replace.
Experiences vary, but the worst affected are those with large mailboxes. Large in this context means thousands of messages and several GB size. Looking at the newsgroups there may be a particular problem with Outlook on 64-bit Windows. I’m not impressed; though it’s not yet clear how widespread the problem is. I’d be interested in comments.
Confession time: I have a huge mailbox. That means I can easily find old email correspondence, and that’s a feature I value. Furthermore, I lack the time or patience to sift through and delete what is no longer required. Unfortunately, the most effective advice for those suffering from slow Outlook 2007 installations seems to be: reduce the size of your mailbox.
While there may be good organizational reasons for doing this, it seems odd that it is needed on today’s machines, with vast amounts of RAM and disk space, and unspeakably fast CPUs. And if you use Exchange, be sure that you archive to a server location, otherwise you can end up with several little archives littered over every machine you use, and they likely will not be backed up.
Why should users have to prune their mailbox because the very latest Outlook cannot cope with it as well as the older version? Surely it is not that difficult to query and display emails from a local database?
I’m also disappointed that, for all the talk of user experience, the new Outlook does not slow down gracefully. You know the kind of thing: you start the application and an unresponsive, semi-painted window appears for a while. You click to change folders and the application appears to hang. You click to drop-down a menu and the application freezes for several seconds. Isn’t this the kind of thing that background threads are meant to help with?
As for RSS, I can’t make sense of what Outlook 2007’s designers were aiming at here. Note that I think the RSS central store, installed with IE7, is a great idea. However, “central store” in this context means central to the local machine. What Outlook seems to do is to copy the contents of this store to your mailbox and then keep it synchronized. I think that’s a mistake: mailboxes are big enough already, and Outlook would do better to query the central store dynamically.
The real problem comes when you use Outlook with Exchange. Many users take advantage of the server-side mailboxes in Exchange by using Outlook on several different machines, all pointing to the same Exchange mailbox. For me, this is the primary advantage of Exchange and Outlook. But what if those several different machines have different RSS feeds in their central store, or even the same ones?
So far, it appears that Outlook cannot cope. I end up with duplicate feeds, I end up with feeds showing in the RSS feeds folder that are not listed in Tools – Account Settings – RSS Feeds; in fact this list is empty on my desktop machine, Sync is turned off, but I still have a ton of feeds in the Outlook RSS feeds folder.
It seems simple to me. Either Outlook’s RSS integration should be 100% local, in which case you just see what is in the central store on your current machine. Or it should be 100% server-based, in which case Exchange should handle the RSS updates. Mixing the two is just silly.
Tip for improving Outlook performance: if you are happy to do this, go into Tools – Account settings – Microsoft Exchange Server – Change – More settings – Security, and remove the checkbox from “Encrypt data between Outlook and Exchange”. Other factors may be search engine integration (Microsoft’s or other), A/V integration, or other add-ins.
Bottom line: I suggest caution before rolling this out over a network.
Update: other tips you can try
A few other things that have helped people:
- Exchange users: Remove Outlook 2003 and do a clean install of Outlook 2007, making sure that a new offline store is created from scratch.
- Run on Vista.
- Turn off indexing. Tools – Options – Search options – uncheck all folders. It’s a shame to do this as the indexed search is useful.
- Let indexing complete. Might be worth leaving the machine running overnight.
- Reduce the size of your mailbox (of course).
The above will not solve all the problems, but can mitigate performance issues.
Further update
Microsoft has posted some official workarounds. See here for comment and link
Technorati tags: outlook, office 2007, outlook 2007, performance, rss
Running Office 2007 Enterprise RTM on a top of the line Toshiba Portege M400, 2GB of RAM, 2Ghz Dual Core Centrino, etc. Generally, this machine is top of the line in laptop terms.
Windows Desktop Search is definitely part of the slowdown, which is a real shame as the Outlook search function works really well when you’re looking for something. However, even with the email searching/indexing functionality turned off, Outlook is painfully slow doing a send/receive, appears to hang when rendering previews and generally takes forever to do common functions!
So far I’ve been impressed with Word and to a lesser extent Excel (haven’t really used it yet), but WTF happened with Outlook 2007! They didn’t even fit it in with the main Office application UI design philosophy.
Got to total agree with the RSS feature – wot a waste of time. What were they thinking of?
The first service pack will be here very soon me thinks!
I’m just glad to find other people who are having similar, and in some case worse problems than me.
Pain and aggro is our reward for being early adoptors!
Only last night I remove Office 2007, and am now back in Office 2003! I love using Outlook period, but damn, Outlook 2007 is way too slow.
Like John said, am glad am not the only one…
So, I suppose we’re all waiting for a SP…
I’ve found that OL 2007 was hopelessly slow for about 2 days, and suddenly has picked up and is running faster than OL 2003 was before on the same high spec (4GB ram, 2.4GHz dual core) PC. Presumably there is some sort of indexing going on that took 2 days to work through my 1GB mailbox…
Ed,
> I’ve found that OL 2007 was hopelessly slow for about 2 days,
> and suddenly has picked up and is running faster than OL 2003
Indexing is a factor, but I still find it much slower than OL2003 even after finishing indexing and running on Vista (which is faster than XP).
So I guess it varies.
Tim
I’ve read so much about this, this past week. So, last night, I uninstalled Office 2003, and the installed Office 2007, again (before I did an upgrade)…
So far, it’s working a lot better than it did the first time. My PST file size is 1.5GB. Opening HTML emails still takes about 3-5 seconds, but I think I can live with that. Before it was taking at least over a 30-40 seconds…
Are you sure you don’t just need more RAM? It can be amazingly frustrating to upgrade software and discover you machine is unusable until you add RAM.
The 2003 version sometimes took up to 20 minutes if I’d been gone for a month. I discovered that the best thing to do was use Outlook Web Access until the end of the day, and then start Outlook as I was leaving for the day.
> Are you sure you don’t just need more RAM?
I have 3GB RAM and have problems.
Tim
Turning off all RSS feeds completely and de-installing WDS 3.0 seems to help somewhat. Outlook 2007 is at least usable with those gone, but still slower than Outlook 2003.
Hopefully Microsoft will do the right thing and fix this on Windows XP. I’m worried they will improve things on Vista but leave everyone trying to stay on XP — at least until things like itunes and other software start to work on Vista — stuck in slowsville.
Hi,
Just installed Outlok 2007 on a new Sony Vaio (2Gb RAM). Mailbox for the user is 4Gb and it runs like a dog. Outlook 2003 is fine and ran fine but what is the story here, any work arounds anyone?
Guys,
In Lookout 2007, try turning on Enable Logging (Troubleshooting) in Tools/Options/Other/Advanced Options and take a look at the POP3 logging. (Temp folder should contain log). See all those “AUTH ” commands. 🙂 What a joke – most POP3 servers do not understand “AUTH”. OL 2003 does not send AUTH, it correctly sends “USER” as first command. Anyway thats just part of the OL2007 fiasco. The UI sure locks up during send/rec and other operations. Forget the size of your PST. Go back to OL 2003 until MS fix OL 2007.
Ring0
———-
KeBugCheck(42);
I’m using OL2007 on Vista, was using it on XP briefly. I’ve got my mail split between two .PST files — a regular one and an archive which holds everything more than 3 months old. After some issues with the indexer (I had to disable it for Outlook, then turn it back on again), it now runs like a charm. The archive PSTs are indexed, so I don’t have trouble finding stuff in about 800MB worth of mail spread across both PSTs.
Creating a new mail profile and migrating to a fresh PST also seems to help.
i’ve finally done it. Enough is enough. Outlook 2003 is the best. It’s just a simple uninstall, and re-install of office 03, and all the email accounts were kept. I am now completely satisfied. sorry OL2007, not for me.
Has anyone tried turning the junk email filter OFF? I didn’t see anyone mention this as a possible slowdown during send/receive…but it seems kinda obvious.
I turned mine off since I use 3rd party junk-filtering anyways, just to see if it would speed things up…and, well, there you go.
Hope this helps some of you…
I have Outlook 2007 on a new Vista (dual boot) installation and it’s so slow that I am thinking of going back to 2003 (until MS fix things) – I do have a question though, prior to installing office 2007 I only had Word 2003 on the new Vista installation, not outlook 2003 – so how do I do a downgrade from outlook 2007 to outlook 2003 whilst keeping all my email account settings ect? Should I uninstall first or just insert the Office 2003 CD? Thanks! Simon
I spent 2 hours with Dell Tier 3 support and have fixed the problem. You need to open outlook as an administrator (by right clicking on the exe file in the Office 12 folder). Then, go to tools/trust center/addins. then click on “go…” at the bottom. I would uncheck outlookaddins. That solved all of my problems! To be extra safe, and to maximize speed, I unchecked everything except indexing (which is the only useful one). That solved my problems. Good luck to everyone!!
This really is unbelievable. The hanging happened to me on Enterprise Office Outlook 2007 on ‘clean’ Vista Business.
How can anyone run their business with no email service like this.
After reading the posts, I uninstalled OL2007, installed OL2003 – same problem, yet my XP machine on the network with OL2003 downloads it all fine in seconds.
Ok, so I then formatted, reinstalled Vista, updated, installed Office 2007 wth a branD new clean pst, set up one of my email accounts and – IT STILL HUNG!!!!
I recommend and build PC’s for small businesses, have two to do next week both wanting Vista & Office 2007 and I will talk them out of it. How can Microsoft allow this to go live with so many people complaining about the hanging on send/receive.
CAn we have some hope from an official at Microsoft who can tell us this is being hotly looked in to?
Regards
Phil
Sam’s fix speeds up the mail checking slightly for me but it still dosen’t solve the issue of general slowness with the program and that during a send and receive everything else hangs. It seems that this version of outlook simply can’t multitask? Also it is taking forever to display the graphics on HTML emails, this was all instantanious with outlook 2003
SOLUTION FOR HANGING SEND/RECEIVE
Folowing my earlier post, our wholesale hosts who are Microsoft Gold Partners solved the solution for me
SOLUTION FOR HANGING SEND/RECEIVE
Folowing my earlier post, our wholesale hosts Netcetera http://www.netcetera.co.uk who are Microsoft Gold Partners solved the problem for me ON A SUNDAY!!
This code in the procedure below cured it immediately:
Go to programs, accessories then right click command line and select run as administrator.
At the prompt type
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable
I cannot thank them enough, with over 60 websites we run, they have provided first class support for over 4 years – and this was a gem.
Regards
Phil
Phil
I have a feeling that the same script may not do much for WinXP users of outlook 2007.
Simon Harris>
You have to uninstall OL2007 and then install OL2003. Hopefully your Profile should have stayed around with your account settings. Just to make sure, you may want to backup your outlook profile settings in:
HKEY_USERSS-……..SoftwareMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWindows Messaging SubsystemProfilesOutlook
(it might be easiest to search for the Profiles key)
Hi George
The fix is for Vista only.
I have received many posts where I have placed this on other forums, all saying the command is not recognised by XP – this is a shame.
Perhaps some clever techie can work out what it does and produce a similar line for XP.
Regards
Phil
Got to completely agree with the previous commenter:
“In Lookout 2007, try turning on Enable Logging (Troubleshooting) in Tools/Options/Other/Advanced Options and take a look at the POP3 logging. (Temp folder should contain log). See all those “AUTH ” commands. What a joke – most POP3 servers do not understand “AUTH”. OL 2003 does not send AUTH, it correctly sends “USER” as first command. Anyway thats just part of the OL2007 fiasco. The UI sure locks up during send/rec and other operations. Forget the size of your PST. Go back to OL 2003 until MS fix OL 2007.”
I’ve checked and also have the AUTH errors being generated. I wonder what the RFCs say in relation to this?!?
>>>I’ve checked and also have the AUTH errors being generated. I wonder what the RFCs say in relation to this?!?
I’ve check and there is an RFC that says the AUTH command is legitimate and the err response is acceptable.
Although undesirable to have errors, it isn’t this that is causing POP email to be so so bad!
I too am having the same issues running on XP with high performance laptops or desktops with 2GB of RAM. Three of four users that we have installed 2007 have large mailboxes. Reducing these is not an option. The fouth user is a new employee and therefore his mailbox is very small.
I too can’t believe the product was released in this condition. We really like the improvements of 2007 but the slowness is killing us.
Is anyone running Outlook 2003 with the rest of the apps being 2007?
I believe it Outlook 2007 my problem is caused due to a large ost file because of a large mailbox. I am unable to deselect folders that I do not need offline; I might be able to filter but not deselect totally.
I ran outlook in non cached mode without any problems.