Outlook 2007 RTM still slow

[Ales Susnik]

1. only POP3
2. from 5 to 250, doesn't matter
3. yes, 5 rules, 5 email accounts, each rule moves the email regarding from
which account it's arriving to it's folder
4. switching off doesn't help

Hope it helps.

A.

I have a few questions for everyone who has reported performance issues:
1. Do you only use POP accounts?
2. How many emails do you download at once?
3. Do you use rules that distribute the messages across multiple
folders? If yes, how many rules and how many folders are you
distributing things across?
4. If you switch off all rules, does the performance get better? (You
can distribute the messages afterwards from the Inbox by running the
rules over the Inbox).

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
Office 2007 RTM Issues: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR):
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/18/43
***
Customize Office 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/customize
OneNote 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/onenote
***
Subscribe to my Office 2007 blog: http://pschmid.net/blog/feed

I've installed Outlook 2007 with great expectations. Unfortunately,
there are performance issues that are pretty much rendering it useless
to me.

Just to note, I'm on a brand new Core 2 Duo T7400, XP sp2 install, so
it's not hardware or legacy XP junk slowing me down.

When I start Outlook, it takes ~30 seconds before I am able to perform
any action.

When email is being received, Outlook freezes. If I'm composing an
email at the time, I can no longer type. If I'm trying to view or
delete other email, no luck. I have 5 email accounts, so the freezing
is around 12-15 seconds every 2 minutes. If I'm receiving a file, the
freezing lasts longer.

Deleting more than a few items from my inbox often freezes things too.

Not to mention it's using 100MB of memory.

I heard that the Beta had similar problems, looks like it made it into
RTM. Does anyone know a fix (besides reinstalling oulook 2003).




Z

 

[Johnny]

Patrick,
The problem is, all of our current configurations worked just fine before we
upgraded... if it worked in OL2003, it SHOULD work in OL2007. Reducing
messages is not a real solution. That's like telling someone using Word , who
is complaining about sluggish performance, to reduce the length of his
documents.

I'll answer your questions:

1. 4

2. When i had the program set to download messages every 2 minutes, i'd get
1-10 messages. Now that i had to reduce the download interval, i get 20-80
messages. Number of messages downloaded don't make a difference... if i
download ONE email, the program slows to a crawl and my hard drive goes nuts.
Downloading 80 messages only prolongs this SLOW process.

3. We have ONE rule to place messages in the JUNK mail folder. The rule
contains a handful of spam keywords. That's all. OL2007 also has a default
rule regarding categories, we unchecked it, and unchecked our JUNK rule...
made no difference.

The program is to blame here... i don't think this is something that can be
solved with a tweak. From what i've read on the net, you either have to live
with this, or go back to OL2003. Based on the fact Microsoft left this flaw
in the program throughout the beta process, i'd guess this is not even on
their radar.

Too bad...

I have a few questions for everyone who has reported performance issues:
1. Do you only use POP accounts?
2. How many emails do you download at once?
3. Do you use rules that distribute the messages across multiple
folders? If yes, how many rules and how many folders are you
distributing things across?
4. If you switch off all rules, does the performance get better? (You
can distribute the messages afterwards from the Inbox by running the
rules over the Inbox).

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
Office 2007 RTM Issues: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR):
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/18/43
***
Customize Office 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/customize
OneNote 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/onenote
***
Subscribe to my Office 2007 blog: http://pschmid.net/blog/feed

I've installed Outlook 2007 with great expectations. Unfortunately,
there are performance issues that are pretty much rendering it useless
to me.

Just to note, I'm on a brand new Core 2 Duo T7400, XP sp2 install, so
it's not hardware or legacy XP junk slowing me down.

When I start Outlook, it takes ~30 seconds before I am able to perform
any action.

When email is being received, Outlook freezes. If I'm composing an
email at the time, I can no longer type. If I'm trying to view or
delete other email, no luck. I have 5 email accounts, so the freezing
is around 12-15 seconds every 2 minutes. If I'm receiving a file, the
freezing lasts longer.

Deleting more than a few items from my inbox often freezes things too.

Not to mention it's using 100MB of memory.

I heard that the Beta had similar problems, looks like it made it into
RTM. Does anyone know a fix (besides reinstalling oulook 2003).




Z

 

[Patrick Schmid [MVP]]

The problem is, all of our current configurations worked just fine
before we

upgraded... if it worked in OL2003, it SHOULD work in OL2007. Reducing

I am aware of what should be the case. As it should be plainly obvious
to anyone reading this thread, that is not the case however. I am trying
to help everyone find a way to live with Outlook 2007's performance and
at the same time collect information as to what things specifically
cause the performance issues for Microsoft. The more precisely I can
tell them what is going on, the better they can look into this.

Are all your POP accounts on the same server or on different servers?

2. When i had the program set to download messages every 2 minutes, i'd get
1-10 messages. Now that i had to reduce the download interval, i get 20-80
messages. Number of messages downloaded don't make a difference... if i
download ONE email, the program slows to a crawl and my hard drive goes nuts.
Downloading 80 messages only prolongs this SLOW process.

Did you test downloading just one email? Small or big email? How long
does it take? How big is/are your PST(s)? How many items do you have in
your Inbox?

3. We have ONE rule to place messages in the JUNK mail folder. The rule
contains a handful of spam keywords. That's all. OL2007 also has a default
rule regarding categories, we unchecked it, and unchecked our JUNK rule...
made no difference.

Thanks for checking!

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
Office 2007 RTM Issues: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR):
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/18/43
***
Customize Office 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/customize
OneNote 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/onenote
***
Subscribe to my Office 2007 blog: http://pschmid.net/blog/feed

 

[maxxed]

Patrick,
The problem is, all of our current configurations worked just fine before we
upgraded... if it worked in OL2003, it SHOULD work in OL2007. Reducing
messages is not a real solution. That's like telling someone using Word , who
is complaining about sluggish performance, to reduce the length of his
documents.

I have to agree 100% on this. The performance is absolutely
intolerable, and, frankly, I'm shocked that this thread isnt flooded
with posts with comments on this.

My PST is large, yes. I have a lot of email, and Outlook 2003 has been
working fine. 2007 simply cannot cope, and waiting 30 seconds to open
an email, or watching the machine become unresponsive when downloading
3 emails (23kb total) is absolutely unacceptable.

In my case, mine is an upgraded installation. Perhaps a clean-install
would fix the issues? There must be a reason why nobody else is seeing
these problems?

Max.

 

[Patrick Schmid [MVP]]

My PST is large, yes. I have a lot of email, and Outlook 2003 has been
How large? How many items do you have per folder?

working fine. 2007 simply cannot cope, and waiting 30 seconds to open
an email, or watching the machine become unresponsive when downloading
3 emails (23kb total) is absolutely unacceptable.

In my case, mine is an upgraded installation. Perhaps a clean-install
would fix the issues? There must be a reason why nobody else is seeing

I doubt it, but if you want to, you can try creating a new profile and
adding your current PST to it. That's as good as clean install.

these problems?

It's currently available only via MSDN, TechNet and Volume license
downloads. That means, the current user base is skewed heavily towards
the people who use Exchange. I expect a lot more posts about performance
after the release to retail & oem at the end of January.

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
Office 2007 RTM Issues: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR):
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/18/43
***
Customize Office 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/customize
OneNote 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/onenote
***
Subscribe to my Office 2007 blog: http://pschmid.net/blog/feed

 

[Johnny]

Max,
We did a clean install before, and the same problem. There's definitely a
flaw in the way Outlook reads and writes to the PST file. Move the PST file
back to an OL2003 machine and the problem goes away.

Patrick is right, the install base is sooo small, i don't think there are
enough people making noise about this. A lot of our corporate clients are
still running Outlook 2000, and given their typical slow adoption rate, I'd
guess the only people using this are the Technet and MSDN subscribers.

 

[Patrick Schmid [MVP]]

Johnny,

If you can pinpoint exact scenarios in which this happens, that would be
very helpful. E.g., does it have to do with rules, lots of emails
received, etc?

Patrick is right, the install base is sooo small, i don't think there are
enough people making noise about this. A lot of our corporate clients are
still running Outlook 2000, and given their typical slow adoption rate, I'd
guess the only people using this are the Technet and MSDN subscribers.

Plus some Volume License customers evaluating Office 2007 right now.

Patrick

 

[max]

Max,
We did a clean install before, and the same problem. There's definitely a
flaw in the way Outlook reads and writes to the PST file. Move the PST file
back to an OL2003 machine and the problem goes away.

Johnny thanks for saving me the time. I'll just have to revert back to
OL2003.

Just to clarify about my setup. I am a large email user. I receive
approximately 500-600 emails a day (in addition to Spam) - and many
attachments. I need to store emails for reference purposes and archive
regularly. I have hit 20gb limits on my personal pst and archive pst
several times, and have deleted emails to keep things sane.

OL2003 handles this perfectly. I do not use rules, and file everything
by hand (speedfiler on OL2003).

My man concern here is simply that I am doing something wrong. It seems
impossible that MS would RTM such a dog of a product. It makes no sense?

 

[max]

Problems solved.

Here is what I did:

1. Uninstalled OL2007 and removed all possible traces of the app.
2. Clean installed OL2007 with its default PST location.
3. Copied my existing (19gb) PST to my secondary Partition (usually
D:/Outlook)
4. Opened OL2007 and pointed the PST to D/Outlook. Removed the pointed
to the C:/ standard location.

How I got here?

I had a fresh box with a clean install of WinXP sitting around. I
installed OL2007 on it and did the above steps, performance was FINE. I
figured it must have been something that OL2007 picked up in the
upgrade process from OL2003 which was slowing it down to a crawl.

Ive been running it for 12 hours now and performance is MUCH better.
Its not as fast as OL2003 but its 90+%. I would suggest that for
everyone having these issues to give it a go.

I repeat, its a 19gb PST, not my grandmothers 500meg pst with 200
emails

Do let me know if this helps or if any questions...

Max

 

[Patrick Schmid [MVP]]

So you say a clean profile did it?

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
Office 2007 RTM Issues: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR):
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/18/43
***
Customize Office 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/customize
OneNote 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/onenote
***
Subscribe to my Office 2007 blog: http://pschmid.net/blog/feed

 

[max]

So you say a clean profile did it?

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]

To be honest I'm not sure what a 'clean profile' actually is, which is
why I detailed the steps as I did. One way or another, it seems to be
fine, I'll report back with updates.

I would like to know if this works for others?

 

[Ales Susnik]

Questions:

for 1. - how did u clean all possible traces?

4. Have u tried moving PST back to C drive and see if the good performance
remains? Wondering if it has to do something with PST being od D drive, since
I don't have 2 drivers (laptop)... before I go uninstalling everything

Thank you in advance,
Ales

 

[Ales Susnik]

I'll try this with my backup laptop, which my wife uses only for emails, has
the same problems, and it was also upgraded from 2003.

I'll report back!

A.

So you say a clean profile did it?

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]

To be honest I'm not sure what a 'clean profile' actually is, which is
why I detailed the steps as I did. One way or another, it seems to be
fine, I'll report back with updates.

I would like to know if this works for others?

 

[Patrick Schmid [MVP]]

Please only try a new profile and nothing else. (Control Panel, Mail,
Profiles)
It would be very important to know whether a new profile alone does the
trick!

Thanks,

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
Office 2007 RTM Issues: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR):
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/18/43
***
Customize Office 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/customize
OneNote 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/onenote
***
Subscribe to my Office 2007 blog: http://pschmid.net/blog/feed

I'll try this with my backup laptop, which my wife uses only for emails, has
the same problems, and it was also upgraded from 2003.

I'll report back!

A.

So you say a clean profile did it?

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]

To be honest I'm not sure what a 'clean profile' actually is, which is
why I detailed the steps as I did. One way or another, it seems to be
fine, I'll report back with updates.

I would like to know if this works for others?

 

[KnightCrawler]

Same problems here:

Freezes when send/recieve.

Freezes when opening a message.

Freezes when deleting email.

I've tried everything to fix this, and have read this whole thread and
it was a problem in the beta and now appears to have made it into the
RTM which is just sad that Microsoft did not have a longer beta period.


It seems the only solution is to go back to Outlook 2003.

========================================

 

[Steve]

I've installed Outlook 2007 with great expectations. Unfortunately,
there are performance issues that are pretty much rendering it useless
to me.

Just to note, I'm on a brand new Core 2 Duo T7400, XP sp2 install, so
it's not hardware or legacy XP junk slowing me down.

When I start Outlook, it takes ~30 seconds before I am able to perform
any action.

When email is being received, Outlook freezes. If I'm composing an
email at the time, I can no longer type. If I'm trying to view or
delete other email, no luck. I have 5 email accounts, so the freezing
is around 12-15 seconds every 2 minutes. If I'm receiving a file, the
freezing lasts longer.

Deleting more than a few items from my inbox often freezes things too.

Not to mention it's using 100MB of memory.

I heard that the Beta had similar problems, looks like it made it into
RTM. Does anyone know a fix (besides reinstalling oulook 2003).

Same issues here: slow receive (machine basically stops doing anything
else), disk churn. I have about 8 pop accounts, 0 rss, 0 exchange.
Upgraded frrom OL2003. PST is about 760M, 2 archive files, 1.2G and
800M. PST on C drive (Dell 1750 laptop with 2.0GHz Core Duo, 2G RAM,
7200RPM drive). Also installed Desktop Search, now my whole system is
sluggish is all the time, and just stops when Outlook is doing its
thing.

 

[Patrick Schmid [MVP]]

Have you tried a new profile?
http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/profile.htm

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
Office 2007 RTM Issues: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR):
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/18/43
***
Customize Office 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/customize
OneNote 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/onenote
***
Subscribe to my Office 2007 blog: http://pschmid.net/blog/feed

 

[Ales Susnik]

Patrick,

I tried... doesn't help :-(

Can't uninstall, reinstall during the week, I'll have to wait till weekend.

A.

Have you tried a new profile?
http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/profile.htm

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
Office 2007 RTM Issues: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR):
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/18/43
***
Customize Office 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/customize
OneNote 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/onenote
***
Subscribe to my Office 2007 blog: http://pschmid.net/blog/feed

Same issues here: slow receive (machine basically stops doing anything
else), disk churn. I have about 8 pop accounts, 0 rss, 0 exchange.
Upgraded frrom OL2003. PST is about 760M, 2 archive files, 1.2G and
800M. PST on C drive (Dell 1750 laptop with 2.0GHz Core Duo, 2G RAM,
7200RPM drive). Also installed Desktop Search, now my whole system is
sluggish is all the time, and just stops when Outlook is doing its
thing.

 

[SteveK]

Here is my story. Fresh install Vista RTM, Office 2007 RTM, new Dell PC
3.5GB ram, 3.20Ghz, 4MB PST. All done fresh, no upgrade, no importing, all
fresh and Outlook hangs on receiving email from POP (Cox) Sending is fine,
memory usage is fine, nothing wierd... I turned off the instant search
thinking that might be it, nothing...

All suggestions welcome..

Patrick,

I tried... doesn't help :-(

Can't uninstall, reinstall during the week, I'll have to wait till
weekend.

A.

Have you tried a new profile?
http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/profile.htm

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
Office 2007 RTM Issues: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR):
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/18/43
***
Customize Office 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/customize
OneNote 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/onenote
***
Subscribe to my Office 2007 blog: http://pschmid.net/blog/feed

(e-mail address removed) wrote:
I've installed Outlook 2007 with great expectations. Unfortunately,
there are performance issues that are pretty much rendering it
useless
to me.

Just to note, I'm on a brand new Core 2 Duo T7400, XP sp2 install, so
it's not hardware or legacy XP junk slowing me down.

When I start Outlook, it takes ~30 seconds before I am able to
perform
any action.

When email is being received, Outlook freezes. If I'm composing an
email at the time, I can no longer type. If I'm trying to view or
delete other email, no luck. I have 5 email accounts, so the freezing
is around 12-15 seconds every 2 minutes. If I'm receiving a file, the
freezing lasts longer.

Deleting more than a few items from my inbox often freezes things
too.

Not to mention it's using 100MB of memory.

I heard that the Beta had similar problems, looks like it made it
into
RTM. Does anyone know a fix (besides reinstalling oulook 2003).

Same issues here: slow receive (machine basically stops doing anything
else), disk churn. I have about 8 pop accounts, 0 rss, 0 exchange.
Upgraded frrom OL2003. PST is about 760M, 2 archive files, 1.2G and
800M. PST on C drive (Dell 1750 laptop with 2.0GHz Core Duo, 2G RAM,
7200RPM drive). Also installed Desktop Search, now my whole system is
sluggish is all the time, and just stops when Outlook is doing its
thing.

 

[Johnny]

Steve,
You'll want to disable the Desktop Search (or uninstall it)... it crippled
one of our systems. In the beta process, we tried it and it would take over
the system... when we got hold of the RTM, we tried the desktop search on ONE
computer, and it killed it.

I should point out, on Vista the search is a little better... seems the
plumbing is better integrated in the OS. But the Send/Receive problem, along
with all the other OL2007 slow attributes we've all described still exist in
Vista as well!