Member Avatar for Takuniku

A user open her mails in Outlook and it will lag then take a few minutes to open up.

This happen intermittenly and I told her is due to the many applications she's running at the same time and she also need to reduce her Inbox size (left 200MB free space) by doing some archiving.

She said archiving doesn't help and she never got this problem before in the past even though she only have little free space.

What else can I do to help this user?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by CimmerianX

Dani AI

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Building on the points from (network/server causes) and (client data-file angle), here is a compact, evidence-first checklist and a few targeted checks that help narrow a persistent, intermittent Outlook lag without guessing at a cause.

Start by collecting repeatable facts: exact timestamps, whether the slowdown happens on the same message(s) or senders, whether it’s in the Reading Pane or only when double‑clicking, and whether other users see the same behavior. While reproducing the lag, observe Task Manager / Resource Monitor for spikes in CPU, Memory, Disk (avg response time) and Network and note whether outlook.exe is the top consumer. If Disk Avg. sec/Read is high (>20–30 ms) or Disk Queue Length grows, local I/O often explains long open times.

Quick, practical checks and commands (use sparingly while reproducing the issue):

Outlook /safe
ping -n 30 <exchange-or-mail-server>
tracert <exchange-or-mail-server>
netstat -ano | findstr :443

Start Outlook in safe mode to rule out COM add-ins; disable hardware graphics acceleration (File → Options → Advanced) to rule out rendering delays; briefly turn off any Outlook/attachment AV integration to test impact. Enable Outlook logging (File → Options → Advanced → Enable troubleshooting logging) and then reproduce the lag so MAPI/transport entries are captured. Capture a short Process Monitor trace filtered to ProcessName is outlook.exe if file/registry hangs are suspected.

If network measurements show latency/jitter spikes, test from a different LAN client to separate client vs server/ISP causes. Check Event Viewer (Application) for Office/MAPI errors and run an Office Quick Repair if client-side corruption is suspected. Collect the timings, Resource Monitor snapshots and logs before escalating; confirm whether other users are affected and whether the mailbox is hosted or on‑premises to decide whether to involve Exchange/ISP support.

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Member Avatar for rubberman

It also could be the Exchange server getting overloaded from time to time, network congestion, or if the email is hosted on the internet your ISP / internet pipe is overloaded. Any of these things are possible given the intermittent nature of the problem. Several minutes is excessive though - although if it is a TCP issue, the length of the delay could be attributable to her computer's TCP/IP timeout settings. I've had such issues in the past where things basically came to a stop until the TCP driver timeout hit and the NIC or driver reset itself and retried sending/receiving the message. Some of these things are configurable (shorter TCP timeouts for example), but usually not easily. I used to do this in Unix systems, but not sure about Windows.

Member Avatar for CimmerianX

The Outlook OST file could be re-created. In the local application fodlers, just search for the .ost file. Close outlook, delete the .ost, then re-open outlook. The OST file will be recreated when you open outlook. This might take a few minutes. When done, close and reopen outlook and check the speed.

Is this the only outlook user on the network that complains of slowdown?
Is outlook server remote or local?

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