Outlook 2010 Freezes (Not Responding)
Something that is not related to SEO in any way but i felt it is a searchable topic and i have a fix (not technically me who fixed it but hey ho!). It’s a problem many people will face and it’s not a problem with Outlook 2010.
I have recently upgraded to Office 2010 on my PC, Some people hate upgrading but i love it, as long as i can still do my work, i love having new and shiny things 
One problem i was faced with rather quickly was Outlook 2010. I had a problem that it would freeze within a couple of minutes of opening it and if you tried to click about, it would get the Not Responding error and you basically had to restart your PC to resolve it. If you do manage to close outlook, when you try to re open it, it will hang on the loading screen.
If you search around for this, you will read lots of people messing about with their registry and pst files.
The problem was caused by something a lot simpler than this. Adobe!! The problem for me was i had an Adobe Add-inn on my outlook which converts your email to a PDF if you want it to. Removing the Adobe Add-inn resolved my problem and i now have Outlook working like a dream!!
***UPDATE***
It turned out that after a morning of restarting my computer every 20 minutes, Adobe wasn’t the ultimate problem i had whilst upgrading to Outlook 2010.
Internet Calendars were a problem, I had a Google Calendar integrated into my outlook and the latest version of Outlook did not like this. This was a problem for two reasons, Firstly, if i tried to access the calendar Outlook crashed and would not re start. Secondly, While outlook does a send and receive, it updates you internet calendar, this is a problem because the calender updates first, because it doesn’t work correctly it never updates, this means you can not send or receive email either.
The last issue i had was my archive folder. I’ve got almost 3 years worth of email archived in one folder, its 2.1GB in size, Outlook doesn’t like this at the moment. I have tried to repair the pst file which confirmed to me this was the issue, as the programme to fix it also crashed. I have set up a new archive folder and all is running sweet again. Its a little annoying i cant access my old email at the moment, however i dont often need to retrieve old email so im going to leave my machine to try and repair the file tonight.
***UPDATE***
After some playing around and testing it turned out that my archive folder was the problem. Once i removed my existing archive folder and started a fresh one i had no problems. I have gradually re instated my outlook to be exactly the same as it was previously with my internet calendars, adobe add on etc and it is running fine. If you are having a problem with outlook freezing then i would recommend trying this.
If in the future you need to retrieve email from the old archive, you will need to close outlook and reopen it in safe mode, you can do this by holding down ctrl when opening outlook. once in safe mode you can re add the data file and retrieve the email needed, if you need to search the archive folder then you will need to wait for outlook to index it to make it fully searchable, depending on how big the file is, this could take some time. Once finished, remember to detach the old archive file before closing outlook and going back into normal mode.
Yes, unfortunately Office 2010 is doing a real bad job of handling large amounts of email. It doesn't matter how up-to-par your computer is, if you have thousands of emails you will get the Not Responding problem. Disabling addons may help a bit, but keeping your folders cleaned up seems to be the ultimate solution. Microsoft, please get your act together, some of us have ten's of thousands of emails, that's just the way it is. This should have been fixed during beta testing.
My outlook freezes but I don't have any archive e-mails as I did a fresh load Windows 7 then Office 2010, I also keep my inbox clean and save e-mails in folders within the inbox and delete non important ones after 3 months so where do I go from here?
I agree with you Nick. Microsoft you want us to buy these new programs then get your act together and fix this problem.
Nice article , i was also having problem and it was AVG antivirus program . when i removed it from the outlook ribbon , my outlook started working like charm.
Thank you siddharth, I tried the same thing and so far Outlook is working like a charm!
Mine was issue with Internet Calender
another thing to check, if you are connected to a server using roaming profiles the PST file will be saved in your documents folder under Outlook Files. Our users were complaining of freezing so we moved the PST to their local disk and no more freezing.
The tell tale sign a PST issue is you cannot end the outlook.exe process. Only a reboot will do the trick. Also, you will most likely have to use a 2003 client to move emails to a new archive then attach the new pst to 2010.
I have Outlook 2010. It freezes constantly. This is a fairly new problem, it was working fine for about a year. I do not have large personal files, and get very little mail. I've tried removing add ins, extending the "time out" period. On and on… still freezes. I'm getting really frustrated!
I'm experiencing the same issue as you, Suzanne. I've been running 2010 now since last year, and have just noticed over the past week or so that it hangs intermittently on sending (three emails in the past week). All three were replies.
Outlook 2010 SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!
Hello I have hunted high and low, did everything every one wrote but only the this could solve all : please try it.
close outlook 2010
open control panel
click on Microsoft outlook 2010 { i am presuming you all have windows 7}
click on repair instead of uninstall. wait a while then there is a reboot.
start windows [ could take a while]
keep the control key pressed and open outlook 2010 in safe model
in in file click the options key
in options key click on add-ons
below you will seee com add-ins click go
com add-ins folder
disable all non-microsoft add ins , restart outlook and see it solves all your problems.
This is the answer I got from Microsoft: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/o…
I hope it's usefull to some of you…
Below only occurs on Windows 7 32 & 64 bit systems I have not had this problem on Windows XP.
I am running both POP and IMAP e-mail accounts through Outlook 2010 plus 100 subfolders in 6 personal folder directories and 10 add-ins. I had not responding issues all the time, I had to convert all personal folders to 2010 versions this solved theses issues inconnection with my POP account, I have narrowed these issues to my hotmail IMAP account and the interface with outlook, whenever a check for e-mails starts whatever I am working on starts not responding for between 5 and 20 seconds. When I move e-mails from the IMAP inbox to a personal folder I get not responding for 5 to 10 seconds.