Outlook 2010 – delayed response

Topic

New Reply

I have just converted to Outlook 2010 when I upgraded from my old Windows XP Pro PC to a Windows 7 64-bit, Xeon workstation. I had been using Outlook Express for years and got used to it responding instantly when emails were moved to folders, emails were deleted, or different folders were selected.

With this otherwise very fast workstation, Outlook does not repond instantly. There is a delay of 3 seconds to move or delete emails and about 2 seconds to change folders.

I understand the Outlook Express used a database file for each folder and Outlook uses a single PST file for everything (in my case about 3.8GB), but I still didn’t expect this performance delay.

I have no active Add-ins, it responds the same way when I run Outlook in safe mode and also when I disable Norton Antivirus Autoprotect and I can’t think of what else to try.

Is this how it should be, or is there something else I should do?

Your advice would be greatly appeciated.

:confused:

Reply | Quote

Replies

What is the size of your .pst file?

Reply | Quote

As I said in my post, 3.8GB

Reply | Quote

In my experience, that’s a bit too big. I never let my .pst active file go beyond 1 GB. I suggest you archive older emails and then compact your .pst file.

Reply | Quote

I have now archived my emails and compacted my main PST file, so it is about 200MB, down from 3.8GB and the preformance is still much the same. Moving an email to a folder still takes 2-3 seconds.

Reply | Quote

Microsoft has a KB article troubleshooting Outlook 2007 performance issues that may also apply to 2010:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940226

Jerry

Reply | Quote

It’s been some time since my plea for help with this really annoying issue in Outlook 2010 and I still have no solution. I can add some observations in the hope that someone will figure out what’s going on and be able to help.

The problem is that each time a message is dragged into another folder (I file my emails) each event takes around 3 seconds before Outlook ‘recovers’, instead of happening immediately, which is what I was used to in its predecessor Outlook Express, where an email was dragged to a folder and the process was instant, allowing me to deal with the next email immediately.

What I have observed is as follows:

1. The behaviour is not caused by .pst size. I archived and reduce my .pst to 200MB and it made no difference and I also observed instant response with a .pst file that is over 10GB in size that was created after a standard PC installation.

2. All of the installed add-ins are de-activated and thus not loaded in Outlook, so they can have no effect.

3. I uninstalled the anti-virus software and this had no impact on the problem (consistent with the 10GB Outlook file, which also has the same anti-virus software).

4. If I drag an email into a folder that only has a few emails in it, it is quicker to ‘recover’ than an email dragged to a folder with a lot of emails.

5. If I drag two emails into the same folder, even later that same day, the first email takes about 3 seconds for Outlook to ‘recover’, but the second one is immediate. It is as if Outlook was indexing the destination folder, but it takes no time once that was done.

6. I enabled the Group Policy to prevent indexing in Outlook, forced a policy update, but it made no difference.

As you can see, I have tried many things, but my problem remains unsolved.

I would be very grateful if someone could finally suggest a fix.

Regards
useful

Reply | Quote

Please tell us a little more.
Are the PST files stored on an internal drive?
Is Office 2010 SP1 installed?
If Office up-to-date with other patches after SP1?
Have you tried creating a new PST file and then copying the data from the troublesome one to it?

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

Hi Joe

Thank you for the response.

The answers to your questions are as follows:

1. The .pst file is stored on the internal hard disk. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I have a Xeon workstation with 16GB RAM that is extremely quick. The only thing that is slow to ‘recover’ is Outlook, when moving emails from one folder to another.

2. Office 2010 SP1 is installed.

3. Office is up-to-date with all patches, the last update being on 14 Feb 2013.

4. I created a new .pst file and imported everything from the old .pst, but it made no difference.

Regards
useful

Reply | Quote

Have you tried a new email profile? See How to create and configure email profiles in Outlook for details.

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

Hi Joe

Thank you for your suggestion.

I have just created a new email profile (to save time, however, I did not create a new data file, but pointed to my existing file, given that I had just created a new data file yesterday and imported all my emails into it).

Unfortunately, it has made no difference.

Regards
useful

Reply | Quote

Hi Hanna

Thank you for your response.

As you will see from my reply to Joe, unfortunately it has made no difference.

Regards
useful

Reply | Quote

What happens with the new email profile if you create a new data file and do NOT immediately import the old data?

If it works OK, then you have a couple of choices. Use the old profile, create a new data file, import a few things at a time until you identify the culprit. Use the new profile and do the same thing.

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

Hi Joe

Thank you for the suggestion. I will certainly try it both ways and see what happens. As I have a very large .pst file (around 4.5GB) it will take some time importing a few things at a time, but I will report back either way once I have concluded the tests.

I appreciate your time.

Regards
useful

Reply | Quote

Sorry. Sometimes there is a corrupted email or task or almost anything kept in a PST. If that is the case you need to identify what is causing the slowdown and get rid of it. A “few at a time” is the only way I can think of to keep the numbers small enough that you can easily identify what you’ve last imported when the problem re-appears.

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

Hi Joe

I understand totally. I was only indicating that the process is going to take me some time, given the number of emails involved and as I intend to let you know the result, I didn’t want you to think that the reason you haven’t heard from me is because I was not following your advice.

Thanks again.

Regards
useful

Reply | Quote

Hi Joe

I have started the process. I created a new data file and imported a few emails, created some folders and moved emails. They moved instantly! Fabulous!! I’m very grateful for your suggestion!!!

This process will take quite a while, of course, but if eventually I do find ‘the culprit’, can I just remove it, or will having imported it somehow ‘corrupt’ the .pst file so that the delays return?

Thank you.

Regards
useful

Reply | Quote

Not sure if just removing it will be enough. You’ll just have to try removing it and see what happens. Sorry, I’m not more definitive.

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

Hi Joe

I started the tedious process, as I said, but the testing to find the ‘culprit’ is proving a bit difficult.

When describing the symptoms earlier, I mentioned that dragging emails to folders during the filing process is when I encounter the delay before Outlook actually moves the email and that if there are several emails intended for the same folder, only the first exhibits the delay. All of the subsequent emails when dragged, move instantly.

Accordingly, I have to test by importing one folder at a time from my original .pst file and then dragging previously untouched emails to previously untouched folders … can you see my problem?

This has caused me to think about the issue again and perhaps I may have left gaps in the story (which is, of course, all you have to work with), so I thought I’d briefly elaborate and perhaps this will lead you to think of another cause, or troubleshooting, or even hopefully a suggested fix.

I upgraded from an old XP Pro PC to a significantly faster Windows 7 Xeon workstation. I keep all of my emails (apart from SPAM of course), all filed in hundreds of separate folders and sub-folders. On my XP machine, I used Outlook Express and moved to Outlook on my Windows 7 workstation.

I set up a new profile, new data file and imported all of my thousands of emails into Outlook, creating a 4GB .pst file.

This ‘delay when dragging emails to folders’ issue in Outlook started right from the beginning. It is not something that has developed over time.

If you still think that the cause is a ‘culprit’ email imported from Outlook Express, then I will continue the tedious process, but I would be grateful if you could suggest a more effective testing method.

Otherwise, I would be pleased to do some different troubleshooting, if you think the issue could be caused by something else. Could the clue be that the second and subsequent emails move instantly to a particular folder, as do emails when moved to an empty folder, or a folder with very few emails in them?

Regards
useful

Reply | Quote

Well, Outlook has never been a very good database manager (which is really what a PST file is). I’m just guessing that the delay you are seeing is Outlook enumerating the contents of the folder before you move an email to it. Once enumerated the subsequent emails move quickly as the information is already available to Outlook. I’m at a loss to find a cause other than the imported email as earlier you said you had another large PST file that worked just fine.

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

Looking for that ‘culprit’ is virtually impossible and I am not convinced that it is the cause of the problem. I have done some further troubleshooting and made some observations that revealed what is going on:

Whenever I drag-and-drop an email, Outlook appears to ‘hang’, while the target folder is being indexed. That is the ‘delayed response’.

Depending on the number of emails in the target folder, this process can take 3-5 seconds. Once the indexing is completed, Outlook ‘recovers’ and allows further activity.

As ‘proof’ that this is happening, if two emails are dragged-and-dropped into the same folder one after the other, the first takes a while (as described above), but the second happens instantly, as the folder has already been indexed.

It’s this indexing, during which time Outlook appears to ‘hang’ that I cannot turn off no matter what I try.

I have set up another PC with standard and default settings and imported emails from Outlook Express resulting in a PST file that is more than twice as large as mine and it has no such problem. Clearly the size of the PST file is not the issue, but I have no idea what is!

I would be very grateful if someone could think of a way to stop Outlook indexing a folder before it allows a drag-and-drop!

Regards
useful :confused:

Reply | Quote