Outlook 2003 is SLOW

September 27, 2005 9:52 AM

Why is Outlook 2003 so much slower than Outlook Express?

I just got a new laptop, which came with a full version of Outlook 2003 preinstalled. I've used OE on all of my past machines, ane was excited to upgrade the the grown-up client. Outlook 2003, however, sends, receives, and does everything else literally 5-10 times more slowly than OE. I even booted up OE on that same laptop and it's just a fast as I'd expect. Has anyone else had this experience with Outlook?

posted by slookdog to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Outlook has always operated way more slowly than OE (I use Thunderbird and Mozilla Calendar at home now). I just chalked it up to good, old-fashioned bloating of the Outlook program. How much RAM you got on your new laptop?
posted by rxrfrx at 9:55 AM on September 27, 2005

Yep, that's about all there is to it. Just remember, when you're starting up Outlook, you're not just starting up an email program. You're starting Word (which Outlook uses, by default, when composing messages I believe), and then entire Office "System" backend. This is how Microsoft gets them to all work so seamlessly together.
posted by chota at 9:58 AM on September 27, 2005

It's going to be a lot slower than OE, but one thing I noticed when I upgraded to 2003 was that it synced up the mailboxes with the offline folders constantly, which bogged my whole machine down. I turned that off and it sped up a lot.
posted by bondcliff at 10:00 AM on September 27, 2005

Just checked and Outlook seems to use at least 5 times the amount of memory that Express does on any given Sunday.

I really wouldn't bother using Outlook unless you need the extra features. I only use it because I have to (at work). At home, I use Thunderbird.
posted by selfnoise at 10:27 AM on September 27, 2005

Response by poster: to rxfrx - 1GB

I suspected Outlook might be slower, but this slow is riddiculous. I guess I'll stick to OE.

Thanks, all.
posted by slookdog at 1:53 PM on September 27, 2005

Make sure that your preconfigured version doesn't have Tools/Other/Enable Instant Messaging in Microsoft Outlook. While this is functional, it causes the client to slow down considerably.

Also consider how Outlook is resolving to attach to your email account. Are there any error messages in your event log that relate to the client having difficulty looking where you told it to look? If it's something external, like a DNS issue, using Express or 2003 isn't going to make a difference.

Of course, that latter bit may not be where you're experiencing the slow-down. That's just a guess.
posted by thanotopsis at 3:28 PM on September 27, 2005

In Outlook, Go to: Tools then Options, click on "Mail Format" tab, uncheck "Use Microsoft Office Word 2003 to edit e-mail messages"

While you're there: Change the "Compose in this message format:" to "Rich Text"

That should help.
posted by SparkyPine at 3:41 PM on September 27, 2005

Outlook is disproportinately affected by the size of your Inbox (including subfolders). OE will sail along with 1000+ messages while a few hundred will bring Outlook to its knees. If you keep your Inbox clean (archive stuff somewhere other than subfolders under Inbox), Outlook is acceptablly fast (still not as fast as OE though).
posted by zanni at 7:19 PM on September 27, 2005

I was gonna be a wiseass and say the slow is from being "embraced and extended," but it's just that oulook majoris is a huge hulking megaprogram in the Office "hairball" tradition (Scott McNeely's word), a whole different breed of cat from minimalist outlook express, a lean, mean mailing machine.

zanni, thanks for the inbox warning. My OE inbox houses an obscene 4926 messages at last count and hasn't ever complained. Fast and smooth and close to perfect. (I'm not recommending anyone try this, including me.)

If I had any initiative, I'd toss in a link to Dvorak's side-splitting article about 2 or 3 months ago entitled something like "Ten Reasons Why Microsoft must euthenize Outlook Express now!" He went through ten pet peeves that make him hate OE. The funny part was that EACH and every one of them was wrong, either outdated or, mostly, a failure to bother learning the thing at all, complaining at length about some lack of a feature... every feature he bitched about not having was right there, mostly not even buried under 7 cryptic menu choices but right up on the menud or even the blinkin' toolbar. Really made me wonder about both Dvorak and his editors, if any.
posted by clicktosubmit at 9:06 PM on September 27, 2005

Meh. 5k isn't really that big. I use mail folders with more than ten times that many messages all day long. But that's not really relevent because that's netscape and not OE. One time about a year ago I decided to try a handful of popular email clients to see if I should switch. Most all of them choked and went down in flames with the larger folders, but netscape does just fine. Needless to say I had no desire to switch.

I guess from the responses to this question that I needn't bother ever trying Outlook in the future.
posted by Rhomboid at 12:46 AM on September 29, 2005