Russ' Do It Yourself Home Workshop

I just set up a new Exchange account through 1and1 internet (I know, I’m taking my chances) and started having problems with Outlook 2007 performance.  I actually added a second Outlook profile with its own Exchange account.  After adding this new profile and account, starting Outlook would sometimes take 5 or 15 minutes.  Once started, I almost hated to do anything because it was likely that, when I clicked on New or Reply, Outlook would hang…possibly indefinitely.  Once it had stabilized, however, it was usually responsive…except for the time(s) when you had to quickly send an email.  It was like the proverbial copy machine that goes down whenever you need to make copies in a hurry.  I did all the things that most people suggest, the main one being disabling all the COM add-ins in the Trust Center (Tools | Trust Center | Add-ins), but still no Outlook love. 

I’m a fan of Google Desktop, but have had problems in the past with Google’s desktop search hampering Outlook.  So, I uninstalled it again.  Miraculously, the next time I started Outlook it started with no hesitation…faster than it has started since I set up my new Outlook/Exchange profile.  In the past I’ve been successful with reinstalling Google’s desktop search product and having Outlook be happy again.  I really like the product…when it doesn’t interfere with me working!  Perhaps I’ll install it again, but not tonight!

An Update

Well, it looks like the Outlook startup problem was resolved, but my latest experience seems to indicate that it is still hanging when clicking Reply or Forward.  Hopefully I’ll find a simple answer to this problem.

Update 2009-11-5

This is a great article that summarizes lots of ideas you can try to attempt to make fix Outlook performance problems.

Update 2009-11-8

I have two accounts that I connect to in Outlook; an Exchange account with 1and1 and a POP account with Verizon.  Between the two accounts I have an OST file, and a couple of PST files in which I store emails.  My PST files are between 500 and 1000 megabytes.  I’ve never experienced any problems with the size of them being an issue.

Update 2009-11-15

Best I can tell, this was all a result of using 1and1 hosted Exchange.  In desperation, I switched from 1and1 to SherWeb and, knock on wood, haven’t seen any hanging issues.  I did a lot of http tracing using Fiddler, and that seemed to indicate that Outlook was waiting on responses from the 1and1 Exchange server for long periods of time.  Not sure what was going on there.