Outlook very sluggish

[Paul G]

Outlook is EXTREMELY slow opening and shutting down. It can take up to 2
minutes & 45 seconds to launch; up to 2 minutes to close. This cannot be
normal. Can anyone tell me how large a typical PST file should be and in
which folder it should be properly located. I have found 2 files named
outlook.pst on my computer. One is in "Documents and Settings\user
name\local settings\application data\Microsoft\Outlook. It is roughly 3.5 Mb
and dated today. The other is in "Documents and Settings\user
name\application data\Microsoft\Outlook. This one is 12.5 Mb and dates back
to 4/1/06, which is a date with no apparent significance (although it COULD
be when Outlook first started being so sluggish). Is this normal? Any help
will be greatly appreciated.

 

[MikeR-Oz]

HI Paul, I am no expert on this topic so I will also be keen to follow the
responses. I moved my outlook.pst to another drive as a back up / security
issue which you might wish to do also. From memory the original is the same
as your first location. Are ther other 'users' for the PC set up?

I have a slowish mail read of about half minute and have been advised that
outlook is a fairly invoved application when it opens so can be a bit longer
but I think yours is certainly too slow. Have you performed usual cleanups of
the HDD, temp folders, spyware, prefetch, defrag etc?

This is a good place to start http://aumha.org/a/health.htm. A great bunch
of gurus on that site as well.
Cheers
Mike

 

[Paul G]

Thanks. I can tell you that I have plenty of spyware/virus protection and do
a defrag regularly. I can also tell you that I don't even us Outlook for
email. I only use it for the Calendar, Address Book and To Do list
functions. I'll check out that other site, but I'm hoping someone here has
the answer to this mystery.

 

[DL]

There is no such thing as a typical OL pst file size
The default location is username\Local settings\Application
Data\Microsoft\Outlook\
However you can locate the pst anywhere on your hd

You might look at any plug-in, e.g. AV/Fax/Sync that have been integrated
into OL and remove any that exist

 

[Paul G]

Thanks DL. Your response triggers 2 questions. First, why do you suppose
there are 2 OL pst files in 2 different locations on my machine? And second,
where would I go to find and identify any plug-ins that may have been added?

 

[DL]

The second location (12.5mb) is where OL stores various settings files why
you have a pst there I cannot answer. It is not the default location.
The default name for the pst is outlook.pst, if the second location has a
different name then maybe its a backup ie outlookbackup.pst or archive.pst
at the location selected by the user.

Depends on version of OL; Tools>Options>Other Tab>Advanced
Options........Ad-in Manager or Com add-ins.
Though if you have an AV or Spam addin you have to disable/remove these in
their respective Apps, as disabling in OL will result in them being
reenabled when OL is restarted.

 

[Paul G]

Thank you again, DL.

The 12.5mb file in the second location is in fact called simply
"outlook.pst". It is not a backup or archive file. The only difference is
that the name appears in all lower case, whereas the 3.5mb file in the
default folder begins with an upper case "O", and of course as stated before,
the dates are different. (FYI: There is in fact a third outlook.pst file,
called "Outlook1.pst. This one is in the default folder together with the
3.5mb file. It is only 265kb in size, and is dated 4/01/06, which is the
same date carried by the 12.5mb file in the second location.)

Regarding Add-ins, etc., I followed your instructions to check for these and
found only 2 items in "Add-in Manager": "Exchange Extensions Property Pages"
and "Fax Server Extenstion". I unchecked both. "Com Add-ins" was entirely
empty.

There was no discernible improvement in Outlook's performance in either
shutting down or starting up as a result of the removal of these two check
marks.