Discussion on:

10 tips for speeding up Outlook

Sharing it with co-workers!

Can you be more specific. What, exactly, do you mean by "the last straw"? What was it about this particular article that set you off?

Gee whiz, we're really going to miss you.

Bye!

For Exchange users on a poor network connection (our wireless infrastructure in the warehouse was pretty poor a couple years ago) I found Kerbtray alleviated much of the connection issues.
Combining this with cached mode greatly improved performance.

remove any duplicates, there are good mini apps to find dups

save a backup .pst for restorations

delete old emails, rely on archived backup to restore an old email

remove duplicates after any restore

I concur with No. 5. > The bigger the PST file size the longer it will take to open Outlook. We always recommend max size of 1.2GB for PST files.
Thanks Jack for the tips!

I envy you.. some of the PST files I have encountered have been in excess of 8 gigs

I have encountered 20+ GB PSTs in recent months. Some of the people I support have saved every email they have sent or received for the last 10+ years in a single PST. Every time I encounter this breed of user, I encourage them to split their archives into smaller chunks and to disconnect older PSTs that are not needed on a daily basis. You would think I had horns the way some of them look at me when I suggest that.

This is why I dislike AutoArchive. The user delegates the clean-up responsibility to a tool that does no filtering; it saves everything. Receipts, jokes, Out of Office replies, etc. I can't force the user to not copy each and every item into his .PST, but I'm not going to enable a tool to move everything en masse.

As to .PST size slowing Outlook down, what difference does it make whether it's the default .PST that's huge or the user-created one(s)? Most of the slow-downs I've seen are due more to the user-created .PSTs than their default destination.

We require (via GPO) archive files be no larger than 3.5Gb, to maintain porability (will fit on a DVD). When a user leaves the company, we archive all that users .PSTs on DVDs and free up that disk space. Then 18 months later when that users' boss asks IT for that ex-employee's archives (and you know they will), we make a copy(s) of the DVD(s) and give them to that boss.

I tend to store "projects" in their own PST file and then disconnect when the project is done. At home I'm not a "pack rat". So my PST is small [156MB].
PSTs greater than 2GB for Outlook 2003 and before aren't recommended.
I knew one guy who [at work] exceeded 31,000 messages in his inbox alone. It took 75 minutes to sync with exchange when he got a new laptop.

With speed issues, the first thing I always do is delete the normalemail.dot file, this resolves speed issues most of the time, surprised it wasn't mentioned

In the early days I used to love Outlook; however now that Google Apps is around; I leave it to Google to handle all the processing power and I simply click and instantly get the stuff Outlook struggles with.

And when Google has an outage [aften enough], you a scr?wed.
I read a story about someone using Gmail had their account hacked. All Email [6+ years] was trashed. Except for the fact that the guy knew a big shot at Google, his mail would of been lost.

If not google apps syncs with outlook, sure you can use it through webmail, but users still want to use outlook

Our ISP is using a local GMAIL server with IMAP to handle server based email. They migrated from exchange, so they won't have to support it anymore. Once everyone is over on the new server, they will give it to the Google cloud.

I still use Outlook(Office 2003) to read my email. I haven't messed with the Google apps yet.

I have often noticed that excessive reminders tends to slow things down. By excessive I literally mean dozens an hour. The alternative of course is to use the task list. But some-how many users are not happy unless they get to close the reminder window every 15 minutes.

Another is turning off the reading pane and the preview pane. It might not seem like much. but those two, slow down managing e-mails when you are moving things around and organizing when it has to open up each e-mail when you click on it to move it.

Like everything else when taken to excesses. Having hundreds of rules to help automate organizing your e-mails can slow your outlook down.

I agree with 1&2 #3... archiving your inbox is great however in many cases that just means you have 2 pst files instead of one and many use it as a dumping ground,
#4 is almost necessary if your exchange server is offsite.
#5 & #6 are absolutely necessary for those with huge PST files
#7... Hmmm never knew anyone that had more than a half dozen
#8 Also I have never seen an issue with slowness due to the feeds
#9 The Achilles heel of any program... Plug-ins and Add-ins Some are great but you never know they are a problem until they are removed.

We had similar problems before we started setting time limits on the "key" folders. According to Microsoft, this includes inbox, deleted items & sent items. Keep those folders under a few hundred and outlook will benefit. Since we use the cloud for email archiving we didn't get a lot of push back from users when we set Exchange to automatically delete message in those folders older than X days.

Well, I don't use Outlook 2007 with Exchange, only POP3, but it has always been slow and as for Outlook 2010 I refuse to update 2007 users. The Outlook 2010 install time gives a clue to the degree of bloat. I've got a Win 7 i7 PC with 8GB which is not the slowest PC on the block. I've tried virtually all the tricks listed and they make little difference. Of course I keep Windows up to date and none of the MS updates over the last 2 years has made the slightest difference. Yes I compact the PST file quite often and try to keep it below 2GB and I use Scanpst every so often as the file does corrupt easily and this does slow things a bit. I keep an eye on add-ins. The bottom line is Outlook is severely bloated with suspect software architecture and in my opinion there is virtually nothing the user can do to make it run sensibly fast. Each version of Outlook since 2003 has run more slowly than the last so the 'Outlook' is bleak!