Microsoft Outlook slow starting

[Tim M]

For a while now, since one of my updates, MSOutlook has been taking up to 5 minutes to load. Drives me bonkers when I want to send a quick e-mail. Well, I finally found the problem today called Add-ins. Apple, Google, and Amazon integrate themselves on to outlook. Now, the way I see it, that is an invasion of privacy as I didn't ask for those programs to monitor my e-mail. But as Mark E. always said, all e-mails are public domain So, if you have the same problem, I will post the solution here, otherwise, I won't bore you.

 

[Kerry & Kathy]

I'm having problems with the Bing search engine. Was working fine last week and today it can only find 3-5 commercial links when I do a routine search. Nothing else comes up.

A search that gave me six pages of links last week ...came up with only three paid links today.

All of this after an automatic update yesterday....

May have to go back to Google.

 

[STL Mark]

Bing is a big ad trap - avoid it unless you enjoy the pop ups.

Tim - It's been a while since I used MSOutlook, but I doubt it has changed all that much. I've had that exact problem before.

I found out that MS limits the size of the folder (directory) that holds all of your e-mails. That includes sent files, trashed files, various folders (mailboxes) that you have created, etc.

Option 1
Delete as many old e-mails, sent e-mails, and material (like emails with attachements) as possible. Don't bother with compressing folders - you need to delete as much material as possible. I would delete any sent mail older than 6-8 months. Empty your trash from within the program, and on your desktop. You get the point - time ti get rid of all of the very old e-mails.

Option 2
Create a new folder
I don't remember which directory contains that Outlook folder - but in all likelihood you will be looking for a 2 gig folder on your C-Drive - that is it's limit, and you have probably reached that limit. Find that folder. Copy it, paste it somewhere, and change the name of it (like add "old" to the filename). Then go back to the original folder and begin to delete some of the contents of the various folders inside. Keep going until you have eliminated as much data as you are comfortable with. Make sure you empty your trash can, and now re-launch MSOutlook.

That should work. BUT, if it does not - you still have the original folder in it's original condition. You can delete the folder that you were trashing, and move the original folder back to it's original location - change it's name to it's original name, and your back - albeit to the condition that you originally had.

Hope this helps.

BTW - Mr. Fehr is the e-mail KING. I'll wager he has about a terabyte of saved e-mails. His instructions would be best.

 

[Tim M]

Thanks Mark. The issue ended up being add-ins that piggyback on to MSO via Apple, Amazon and Google. Irks me when software is installed without my knowledge. Once I disabled those, it works like it's supposed to. I have my .pst file set as an unlimited sized, but I limit the size of e-mails displayed, so I don't necessarily have to maintain it that much.

 

[PaulProe]

Archive

If you set the "AutoArchive" on Outlook, it will move older messages to a different PST file, thereby getting around any size limitations. It also speeds up loading considerably since your main data file is considerably smaller.

You can set the archive time to anything you want. I move anything older than 3 months to the archive file.

On the deleted folder, it does not default to getting rid of the messages. Unless you change the settings, it keeps all your old deleted messages. Kind of like keep all your trash in plastic bags in the garage In settings, you can change this to clear the folder on certain actions - or you can right click on the folder and one of the options is to truly delete all the files.

Outlook is pretty powerful, but it is hampered by all the Microsoft feature bloat and poor documentation.

Paul