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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

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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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Best Practices of using Cached Mode in Microsoft Outlook 2003

Introduction

Cached Exchange Mode is a new great feature in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003. Cached Exchange Mode permits Outlook 2003 to use a local copy of a user's mailbox while Outlook 2003 maintains an online
connection to a remote copy of the user's mailbox in Microsoft Exchange 2003.

Upgrade

Upgrading client computers to Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 is a good idea and then enable Cache Mode (refer below Fig 1-1, here we enable cached mode in Outlook 2003). Cached Mode creates a local copy
of the Exchange Mailbox and reduce the network traffic to the Exchange Server. This feature is great for Clients in remote Sites with limited network capacity. During the Migration process your users can work
with the local copy of the mailbox.In any case Outlook 2003 is recommended seeing that it compresses information when working with Exchange 2003 and employs a useful Cache mode that works offline and
synchronizes in the background with the server, better utilizing WAN lines.

Fig 1-1

Best Practices

Cached Exchange Mode synchronization timing: To provide a good balance between usability and network efficiency, the timing of synchronization communications between Outlook 2003 and Exchange
Server 2003 has been optimized by using synchronization timers.

You can change these synchronization timer values by creating and by modifying the following registry keys and values under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook
\Cached Mode registry key:

1. Upload=dword:0000000f (default is 15 seconds).

2. Download=dword:0000001e (default is 30 seconds)
3. Maximum=dword:0000003c (default is 60 seconds)

The following features depends on network access and hence it can cause delays in Outlook (Cached mode) unless users have fast connections to Exchange data, so it is sugessted to limit those usage.

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1. Delegate access (Accessing of e-mail by delegates )

2. Opening another user's calendar or folder
3. Using a public folder that has not been cached

It is also recommended that you disable or do not implement the following features or combination of features if you deploy Cached Exchange Mode:

1. Instant Messaging integration

2. The toast alert feature together with digital signatures on e-mail messages
3. Multiple Address Book containers

In a typical scenario, the Address Book contains the Global Address List and the Contacts folders. Some organizations configure subsets of the Global Address List. These subset address books are displayed in
the Address Book. These subset address books can also be included in the list that defines the search order for address books. If subset address books are included in the search order list, Outlook 2003 may
require access to the network to check these address books every time that a name in an e-mail message is resolved.

Outlook 2003 add-ins: Remove Third-party add-ins if any. Sometimes third-party add-ins interfere with Outlook and cause performance issues.

Fine tune the Client-side rules such as:

1. Remove any unnecessary client-side rules.

2. Click the Stop processing more rules option in the Rules Wizard.

Impact of having Large Mailboxes:

1. If the user's OST file grows too large (for example, larger than 1 GB), Outlook with Cached Exchange Mode performance degrades. To improve response time in Outlook, users should either reduce the
size of their mailbox (for example, by archiving older files) or turn off Cached Exchange Mode.
2. If the users' Public Folders Favorites folders include large public folders, their OST files can become large also, which can adversely affect Outlook performance in Cached Exchange Mode.
3. OST Offline File Folders.Unicode OST files can store up to 20 gigabytes (GB) of data, instead of the limit of 2 GB on non-Unicode (ANSI) Outlook files.

4. Users with large Exchange mailboxes

If users with existing OST files have large Exchange mailboxes, they might experience errors when Outlook attempts to synchronize their mailboxes to their OST files. To help prevent this, you can first set a
policy requiring new Outlook files to be Unicode-formatted, since Outlook Unicode files do not have the 2-GB size limit that Outlook ANSI files do. Then, when Outlook is deployed with Cached Exchange Mode,
Outlook creates a new Unicode OST file for users that currently have ANSI OST files. Users' existing OST (and OAB) files are not removed.

Some Issues that you may encounter

1. Outlook 2003 SP1 users in Cache mode have issues setting up OOF messages. (Even if you apply all latest updates. This issue is fixed in SP2)

2. When you use Outlook 2003 in cached mode and set a message for deferred delivery, the message is never delivered at the scheduled time, but when Outlook is launched

Note: Outlook 2003 in Cached Mode operates against a local .OST file which is synchronized with the server periodically. When a message is deferred for delivery using "Do not deliver before" in the message
options window, the message is deferred to the local Outbox instead of the server. For this reason, the message will not be delivered from the local .OST unless the client is running at the time the message is
scheduled to be delivered.

3. Delegate and Manager would observe inconsistent calendar details, if any of them is in Cached mode.

4. Users using Outlook in cached mode will not see the latest entries in the GAL immediately. Maximum delay that can happen is 24 hours. Again that depends on the OAB generation interval.

Summary

For optimal performance, you should use Cached mode in Microsoft Outlook 2003. This will dramatically speed up your experience using your Organization Exchange Server systems.

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