Friday, December 16, 2011
Cure for Outlook 2007 running slow
I don’t use Outlook myself, for all it’s quirks I still much prefer to use Opera’s built-in mail client rather than have to run a separate program to check and send mail, but I know someone who does use it and they constantly complained about how slow it was: sending and receiving messages was taking far too long, and the occasional message would get stuck* in the Outbox with no apparent way to delete it, etc.
The two problems mentioned above are probably unrelated issues but the nub of his whinging was that Outlook 2007 was so problematic that he was considering removing the whole of Windows 7 from his computer and going back to XP as he was spending too much time sat looking at his screen waiting for it to do something. He was not alone.
A quick search on the web revealed that his grievance was shared by many other people around the planet, and it seemed that there was a quick fix for this widely shared problem, and it is this…
1) Close Outlook
2) Go into your files and folders and navigate your way to Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12
3) Open outlook as an administrator (by right clicking on the Outlook .exe file in the Office 12 folder)
4) When Outlook opens go to Tools…> Trust center…> Addins, then click on “go…” at the bottom.
5) Uncheck all the boxes which it allows you to do so (you may get an message saying that you’re not allowed to change some of them - just accept this), except for the indexing add-in… it’s probably worth keeping that one installed.
This procedure seems to have made a lot of people happy and, in our case, Outlook now speeds along without a hitch.
* P.S. Remember that one about messages getting stuck in the Outbox? You may be able to delete such messages when running Outlook as an administrator, or after following the above procedure, but you could also try running Outlook in “Safe Mode” and then try deleting the message - which worked in our case.
To run Outlook in safe mode you need to click on your Windows “start” button then choose “Run…”. In the little box which opens just type outlook /safe and then click on the “OK” button. Remember that there is a space between the “k” and the “/” when you type this - if in doubt just copy the command from this page and paste it into the box.
