How to Speed-Up Outlook 2007

by Canuck

July 2, 2008

Canuck is an administrator at Help2Go. Much of his computer knowledge has been acquired since joining Help2Go, from research, to learning from the wealth of knowledge of its members. He lives by the credo 'there is no such thing as a dumb question'.

My Outlook 2007 seems to take forever to open and from there it also takes quite a bit of time opening some of the e-mails, especially newsletters and other web based information. I'm not alone in this, I know. I've scoured the net and found the following solutions and in combining them have come away with exceptionally fast access to Outlook 2007.

Disable Add-ins

Disable any Add-ins in Outlook 2007 that you don't need. In Outlook 2007 go to Tools > Trust Center > Click on the Add-ins section > You will now see all active, non-active, and disabled add-ins > Click on the add-in you want to disable > click on the Go button > in the COM add-ins page uncheck the add-ins you want to disable > OK. Basically the only one I left was the back up option if you have it.

RSS Feeds

If you don't use the RSS Feed Reader it should be removed as it really slows down Outlook. This will also get rid of the RSS feeds from the outlook side bar.

The main reason Outlook is made slower by RSS feeds is that Outlook will need time to sync with IE7's feeds. By disabling this sync, you will improve Outlook's performance.

To disable Outlook's RSS Sync:

Open Outlook 2007 > Tools > Options > Other tab > Advanced Options > uncheck Sync RSS feeds to the Common Feed List > OK > OK.

Corrupted Files

For some reason, during the upgrade these four files can become corrupted - the migration from 2003 to 2007 isn’t the smoothest but not having to create all your POP3 accounts again is excellent.

Note, I upgraded from Outlook 2000 to 2007, so this fix also works for this upgrade.

So the idea here is to find four files and change their extensions to .old.

First file
The first file is found in your main drive C:\ for most of us > Documents and Settings > user-directory (this is usually your name) > Local Settings > Application Data > Microsoft > Outlook > extend.dat . Right click on extend.dat > rename > change it to extend.old and then click on a blank area of the page.

Second File
In the same directory there may be a file called views.dat , if it's there change it to views.old .

Third File
Now make your way to Drive Letter (C:\) > Documents and Settings > user-directory > Local Settings > Application Data > Microsoft > FORMS > FRMCACHE.DAT and change that file to FRMCACHE.OLD .

Fourth File
And lastly Drive Letter (C:\) > Documents and Settings > user-directory > Application Data > Microsoft > Outlook > outcmd.dat and change this file to outcmd.old

NOW, restart Outlook 2007, you should see a vast improvement in speed.

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