My Outlook is very slow and delays displaying the words I type.

[mikeduncan]

My Outlook is very slow and delays displaying the words I type. each time I
click on a topic it takes a long time to display. I rand my Office program
disk in the repair mode, but it didn't help. Any suggestions?

 

[Kal B]

I, too, have this problem. I have only noticed my problem since eight MS
"automatic updates" were installed on May 10, 2007. Among the updates were:
Update for Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter (KB934708) and Security Update for
Office 2003 (KB934180). I have a hunch that one of these guys is the
culprit. Does anyone have any thoughts?

For what it's worth, I have MS Office 2003 SP2 and I'm running Windows XP
SP2 - Home Edition.

 

[Lee42]

I have exactly the same problem and it's only started since the updates you
mentioned.

One way round it is to set Outlook to start with the default page as Outlook
Today. Any slowdown seems to stop once you go to Outlook Today so I just have
Outlook start with the Outlook Today page. A slight inconvenience but nothing
major until there's a fix for it.

 

[Smokin' Hologram]

Me too.

I'm on Outlook 2003, Windows XP Pro 2002 service pack 2

I noticed recently that something "hangs up" Outlook, causing it to take
forever to display messages, either in the reading pane or in their own new
window. The messages are "there," they're just "slow" to render on the
screen. So slow that the main Outlook window eventually announces itself as
"(Not Responding)" (but you can wait it out and it will eventually respond);
so slow that the Ctrl-Alt-Del thingummy indicates that a full 100% of
processor space is being used by Outlook.

This started for me 'round about this weekend, so I'm suspecting the damned
automatic updates thing did it. Gee what a surprise, it's exactly concurrent
with the release from Microsoft of an expensive product that supercedes the
one I'm using. Scrounging for money, anyone?

Work-around solution-ish thing:

Set everything everywhere to plain text. Writing messages, sending, reading,
etc. etc. Get away from HTML and from "Rich Text" and all those other
options. You lose pretty pictures but you gain speed. It doesn't always work,
and (I'm surprised to note) certain settings will un-set themselves away from
plain text right back to problem text.

Also, in your Display control panel thingummy, set it up to have no
smoothing for font edges (Control Panel > Appearance and Themes > Display >
Appearance > Effects > uncheck the "Use following method to smoothe the
appearance of screen fonts").

These work-arounds indicate clearly to me that the problem has something to
do with rendering HTML and fancy fonts on the screen, and not with Outlook
itself. I don't use MS Internet Explorer or Word because they were written by
babbling chimpanzees on the planet Zog twelve centuries before humankind
developed common sense, but I suspect they too might have developed similar
problems after the handy-dandy auto-update on May 10 screwed everything up.

Three cheers for Bill Gates' "everything gets automatically better if we
just change it from how it already works" world-view! Hip hip HOORAH! Hip hip
HOORAH! Hip hip HOORAH.

Grrr ...

 

[Dennis T Cook]

My Outlook is very slow and delays displaying the words I type. each time I
click on a topic it takes a long time to display. I rand my Office program
disk in the repair mode, but it didn't help. Any suggestions?

Same here with Outlook 2000. Seems to have started just after recent
office updates.

Running procmon (www.sysinternals.com) shows many many registry accesses
on every key press when entering email text. Sample follows:

RegOpenKey","HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet
Settings\ZoneMap\Domains\power-cleaner.com"
RegQueryKey","HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet
Settings\ZoneMap\Domains\power-cleaner.com"
RegEnumValue","HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet
Settings\ZoneMap\Domains\power-cleaner.com"
RegEnumKey","HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet
Settings\ZoneMap\Domains"
RegCloseKey","HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet
Settings\ZoneMap\Domains\power-cleaner.com"

This looks like where the restricted sites list is kept, and in my case
I use spybot to "immunize" 18000+ sites, so for every key press, it
appears that outlook is scanning through all configured restricted
sites. Seems absurd.

Workaround: Clear the restricted sites list; well... make it much
shorter.

 

[PD43]

One way round it is to set Outlook to start with the default page as Outlook
Today. Any slowdown seems to stop once you go to Outlook Today so I just have
Outlook start with the Outlook Today page. A slight inconvenience but nothing
major until there's a fix for it.

Don't know how you figured that one out, but IT WORKS.

I can now reply to an HTML message and type as fast as I am able,
rather than switch to text mode.