That Damn PC

How to speed up Outlook 2003/2007

by Kiven on May 13th, 2008

Is your Microsoft Outlook running slow or taking forever to download new emails? Here are some tips to speed up the performance of Microsoft Outlook (2003,2007). Note that you can also apply these tips to the new Mozilla Thunderbird 2 or even the older versions.

On to the tips to speed up Outlook!:

TURN OFF YOUR ANTI-VIRUS EMAIL SCANS
This step is only advised for people who more or less know what they’re doing on a computer. With that note aside, this step alone makes probably the biggest difference in performance increase. Most people experience slow downloads and sending of emails because their anti-virus is taking forever to scan all incoming and outgoing emails for viruses. You should turn off scanning incoming emails if you’re smart enough to know that you should never click on an .EXE file. This gives you a huge performance boost AND your scanner will probably scan the file if you run it anyway. You should turn off the scanning of all outgoing emails if you don’t normally send attachments or don’t send risky program-attachments. Again…you shouldn’t worry too much about it because most people who use a free email service already have their emails scanned.

DECREASE YOUR EMAIL FOLDER SIZE
Your Outlook or email program is probably running slow not so much because of the size of the PST file or the total of your emails. Microsoft Outlook is probably running slow because your most commonly used folders have too many emails in them. A GOOD tip for this is to decrease the number of emails inside your “Inbox” folder. The obvious reason is because this is your most commonly used folder and probably the default folder that your email client opens up with. You can decrease emails in your Inbox folder without deleting them by creating sub-folders. You should be doing this anyway to be better organized. (You can also take a step further by creating message rules and email filters to have emails automatically filed and placed in specific folders right as they arrive.)

DISABLE UN-USED OUTLOOK ADD-INS
You probably have a ton of extra components that you never use. Common examples of synchronization, fancy toolbars, or other bridge type components that allow Outlook to work with other programs on your computer. Just go to the ADD-ONS manager and disable these 3rd party features that you never use. If you don’t know what something is, just un-check it anyways since add-ins are not required for Outlook to function. Many people have noticed huge increases by disabling add-ins from time to time.

TURN OFF RSS FEEDS FOR OUTLOOK 2007
Microsoft Outlook normally installs with a set of RSS feeds; if you don’t read RSS or even know what it is, just disable this feature to save precious CPU resources. Go to Tools > Account Settings > RSS Feeds > Select all the RSS feeds and click REMOVE.

Tips from Rfuz

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POSTED IN: Email, Microsoft Office