Outlook 2003 slow to delete

[Ken G]

As of yesterday (June 13) my Outlook is taking up to 12 seconds to delete a
message from the inbox. The message header is gone almost immediately but the
message remains in the viewing pane for anywhere from 8 to 12 seconds. It
seems to be only in the inbox that this is happening. Its not inbox size
that's the problem because it has worked properly in the past with the inbox
much bigger than it is at the moment. Any clues?

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Does it work correctly in Outlook Safe Mode?
Start-> Run; outlook.exe /safe

What did you change/were you doing before it started happening yesterday?

 

[Ken G]

It does the same in safe mode - around 10 seconds before the message goes
from the viewing pane.

I made no changes to Outlook, there may have been automatic
windows/microsoft updates, but I don't take much notice of them. Its set to
update without my intervention.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Updates are released on the 2nd Tuesday of each month, so if you've used
your computer before this week, they were probably installed before
yesterday already.

Which mail account type are you using?

What is the current size of the entire mailbox (or pst-file) and how many
items are in there?

Scan your pst-file for errors with scanpst.exe and see if it comes up with
anything.
http://www.msoutlook.info/question/77

 

[Ken G]

Thanks Robert.

The pst file is 1,031,737kb (much bigger than I thought!)
I ran scanpst.exe and it did find errors. After repair, everything seems to
be back to normal, but is my pst file too large?

Thanks for your help. I didn't know scanpst.exe existed.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Hi Ken,

You're welcome! Good to hear everything is working again

Your pst-file isn't too large, especially if it is a UNICODE formatted
pst-file.
To find out see http://www.msoutlook.info/question/111

It is getting to a size though where hardware could form a limiting factor
for its speed. On a regular desktop, its performance should stay up till at
least 2GB though for Outlook 2003.