Anyone who knows me hears my frequent criticisms of Microsoft Outlook. (Or at least the thunder from my fist pounding my desk.) Trust me, I got the proof and experience and can reproduce every single Outlook frustration on demand. That said, I have been on the crusade in the past year or two to properly use Outlook and acquiece to the pains of it and utilize it for its benefits.
The problem though in my adoption of Outlook is the horribly slow performance that comes with it. Sure, it comes with a calendar, some RSS features and a ribbon UI … but it doesn’t mean anything if it hangs with every few messages or every time you perform a search for a distant email.
In the video above I explain the problem and the solution to Outlook 2007 hanging and freezing. It was amazing the results this one setting delivers. Outlook opens in about 25 seconds compared to the 4 minutes previous. Outlook also performs lightning-fast server-side searches without hanging. It’s a live example of my email at work, so product placement isn’t completely intentional, it’s just where I am connected to Exchange internally.
Compressing my PST or OST or whatever didn’t help much, but that would probably be an ideal solution if you use POP email. Many tutorials advise against unchecking the Cached-Exchange Mode setting as it is more network and server intensive. Given the advice our IT guys upgraded the mail server to newer hardware was the green light to put it through its paces and try it.
I only came about this feature after our IT guy suggested it to me one Friday afternoon. As a Microsoft proponent, he explained the benefits this does and showed me an example of it working with someone who receives the most email in the company — our director of finance. Still reluctant, I went over and asked him if he could show me how fast it worked and from that moment on, I was hooked. Changing the setting took about 30 seconds, closing and rebooting took about 3 minutes and everything after that has been very speedy in Outlook.
Again, two years of Outlook hell solved by this one simple setting. Who knew? Thank you Microsoft. (Sarcasm.) I hope this helps you if you wanted to ever find out how to speed up outlook or to stop it from freezing. Let me know if this helps. 