Fix Microsoft Outlook Slow Loading Issue

Outlook is an integrated part of Microsoft Office applications and it’s one of the most popular email management software. However, our experience with Outlook won’t always be smooth. Outlook may become sluggish or even freeze up completely. It’s annoying enough to wait for few minutes to open Outlook. Because you use Outlook often, delay may accumulate resulting in lost productivity. In this article let us explain some easy ways to fix Microsoft Outlook slow loading issues.

1. Open Outlook in Safe Mode

When troubleshooting Microsoft Outlook, first thing you should do is to open it in a safe mode. When this mode is enabled, Outlook will load only essential components to perform basic tasks. Add-ins won’t be loaded as well, so you will notice that many of the functions won’t work. Follow the below steps to open Outlook in safe mode.

• First close open Outlook application.
• Press ‘Win + R’ keys to open Run prompt.
• Type ‘outlook /safe’ in and hit enter.
• Outlook will open in safe mode.

Check the emails are opening faster and you can able to send and receive messages. If Outlook works faster in safe mode then it’s an indication that additional add-ins causing the slowness.

Note: If ‘outlook /safe’ does not work, try ‘outlook.exe /safe’ or provide the correct installation path for the Outlook on your computer. In addition, you should select the correct profile when launching in safe mode.

Related: Fix Microsoft Word slow loading issues.

2. Remove Add-ins

If your Outlook performs smoothly in safe mode, then you may have bad add-ins that cause performance issues. Evaluate your add-ins and find out which one may potentially cause performance issues. Follow these steps, in order to deactivate add-ins:

• First create a desktop shortcut for Outlook.
• Right click on the desktop shortcut Outlook icon and choose ‘Run as administrator’ from the context menu.
• When Outlook opens, go to ‘File > Options’.
• Go to ‘Add-ins’ menu in the left sidebar and then choose ‘COM Add-ins’ from ‘Manage’ dropdown. After that click on ‘Go…’ button.

• Uncheck all the checkboxes to disable all add-ins.

3. Finding Problematic Add-ins

Outlook 2016 and later versions has an option to find the add-in that cause slow performance. Go to ‘File > Info’ menu. Scroll down on the right pane and click on the ‘Manage COM Add-ins’ button. This section will list out all the add-ins that causing slow performance and crashing Outlook.

You can check how much time delay happens with each add-in and disable the add-in if you don’t need it.

4. Disable Hardware Graphics Acceleration

If you use an affordable laptop with low-performance processor and integrated graphics, enabling graphics acceleration may end up causing poor performance and freezes. Follow these steps:

• Open Microsoft Outlook.
• Go to ‘File > Options > Advanced’.
• Uncheck ‘Disable hardware graphics acceleration’ under ‘Display’ section.
• Click OK and save your changes.

5. Disable RSS Feeds

RSS feeds help you to keep up to date with the latest changes. However, real time updates with RSS feeds can significantly affect the performance of Outlook. Try to disable RSS feeds and if Outlook still performs poorly, you can re-enable it. Follow these steps:

• Open Microsoft Outlook.
• Go to ‘File > Options > Advanced’.
• A list of RSS feeds will be shown and uncheck them all.
• Find and uncheck ‘Synchronize RSS Feeds to the Common Feed List’.
• Restart Outlook and verify that the problem has been resolved.

6. Enable Auto Archive

After years of use, you may already accumulate a ton of important emails that you can’t delete. Unfortunately, Outlook will load them when it starts. You need to manage old emails to regain the lost performance. Follow these steps:

• Open Microsoft Outlook.
• Go to ‘File > Options > Advanced’ menu.
• Click on ‘AutoArchive Settings’ button under ‘AutoArchive’ section.
• Check ‘Run AutoArchive’ and decide the archiving frequency, depending on your preference.

7. Get Latest Updates

Microsoft releases new updates regularly and an update may provide noticeable improvements. Follow these steps:

• Open Microsoft Outlook.
• Go to ‘File > Office Account’.
• Look for the ‘Update Options’ and choose ‘Update Now’ from the dropdown menu. The update process will commence if there’s a new update for your Outlook.

Related: Fix Microsoft Excel slow loading issues.

8. Download Complete Items

When your Outlook is connected with POP3 or IMAP, it’s a good idea to tell Outlook to download the entire message and not only the header. If a complete message has been downloaded, Outlook doesn’t need to sync each time a new item is clicked. Follow these steps:

• Open Microsoft Outlook.
• Go to ‘Send/Receive > Send/Receive Groups > Define Send/Receive Groups’.
• Click on the Edit button.
• In the ‘Folder Options’ section, choose a folder where IMAP items will be downloaded to, by checking on it.
• Choose ‘Download complete item including attachments’ and click OK.

You need to be aware that downloading complete message may not be a good idea if your inbox is already bursting with thousands of email messages. If you regularly delete and archive old emails, this solution should improve performance.

9. Enable Cached Exchange Mode

When this option is enabled, Outlook will download data files from the server and they will be cached on your computer. This may contribute significantly in speeding up your Outlook, because it’s no longer necessary to read data across the network all the time. Note that this solution will work only your Outlook is connected to an Exchange server. Follow these steps:

• Open Microsoft Outlook, go to ‘File’ menu and click on the ‘Account Settings’ button.
• From the dropdown again choose ‘Account Settings’ option.
• Select the Microsoft Exchange email account and click on the ‘Change’ icon.
• Under ‘Offline Setting’ enable ‘Use Cached Exchange Mode’ option.

• Restart Outlook and verify whether the problem has been resolved
• If you want to disable Cached Exchange Mode in the future, uncheck ‘Use Cached Exchange Mode.

10. Manage PST File

Outlook saves your archived emails as a .pst file. You need to keep the size of PST file under control and it may get out of hand, after a period of time. Unfortunately, PST file won’t shrink even if you delete a lot of emails from your inbox. Follow these steps to compact your PST file:

• Open Microsoft Outlook and go to ‘File > Account Settings’.
• Click on ‘Account Settings’ option and go to ‘Data Files’ tab.
• Choose any PST file that needs to be compacted (generally this will show with the name as ‘Archives’).
• Click on ‘Settings’ and a dialog box will appear, click ‘Compact Now’ and then click OK.

The time needed to compact the PST file, depends on its original size.

Related: Fix Microsoft PowerPoint slow issues.

11. Delete and Recreate a New Outlook Profile

Outlooks uses the profile settings to open the email accounts for the logged in user. Sometime this profile might get corrupted causing long time to start Outlook. In such case, you will see the message ‘Profile Loading’ when opening Outlook application.

• Close Outlook application and go to ‘Control Panel > User Account > Mail (32-bit)’.
• Remove the current Outlook profile and add a new one.
• You can also first copy the existing profile for a backup purpose.

After creating a new profile and check whether Outlook is loading faster.

12. Microsoft Exchange Server Problems

When you are connected to Microsoft Exchange Server then the emails need to be downloaded to your account from the server. You can see the delay in receiving emails depends on the administrator settings. Sometimes Exchange Server might got disconnected and causing the slow performance. Ensure to see the Outlook status bar is showing as “Connected”. Or contact your network admin to check the problem.

13. Large Emails with Attachments

Some people have the bad habit of sending large emails addressing many people or to a group id having hundreds of recipients. The larger emails will slow down the entire network or even block the network if the limit is exceeded. So, avoid sending larger emails to multiple people. Possibly you can store the attachments in cloud and share the link with appropriate permissions.