One of the new features in Office 2013 is Hardware Graphics Acceleration which is supposed to improve performance. It doesn't always work well on older computers (and even some new ones). Symptoms include blurred text, cursor hangs randomly, and Outlook freezing for a few seconds (or longer).
Although many of the complaints subsided since this article was originally published, problems with Outlook 2013 crashing or hanging on Windows 7 with Aero enabled are recurring following the release of Office 2013 SP1. Disabling Hardware Graphics Acceleration should solve the problem (using a non-Aero theme would also fix it).
I'm seeing a number of complaints where Outlook freezes or hangs and in many of the cases the issue when away when hardware graphics acceleration is disabled.
You can disable the use of Hardware Graphics Acceleration (for the entire Office 2013 suite) from the Options dialog of any Office 2013 application. Each application that is open will need to be closed and restarted after changing the setting.
In Outlook 2013, go to File, Options, Advanced and select Disable Hardware Graphics Acceleration, near the bottom of the dialog.
This value is stored in the registry at
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Graphics
DWORD: DisableHardwareAcceleration
Value: 1 to disable
Administrators can disable hardware graphics acceleration using Group Policy. It's located in the Group Policy Editor under Microsoft Office 2013 > Miscellaneous > Do not use hardware graphics acceleration.
More Information
Visual features or video quality may differ from one computer to another in Office 2013
For help troubleshooting general video issues in any version of Office, see
How to troubleshoot video issues in Office programs
THANKS! This issue was driving me nuts. I work from home a lot and bought two new AOC monitors. I use one now as an external monitor for my work laptop. Every time I had Excel or Outlook open and the PC went to standby, when it woke Excel would freeze. Glad you posted this and the search engines ranked your site high for the search phrase I used!
I have been working on Outlook 2016 for a while. I have numerous email addresses that I monitor. When I turned off Advanced Graphics Acceleration, it seems to improve start up. Now the question is: Why? What is advanced graphics acceleration, why does it slow down program start, and IF we turn it off, what features do we LOSE within the program? i see some people say it made no difference after a while, so if that happens, do I say "it's a fix" for 5 hours, but then we are back to it hanging up on startup again? Mostly, I want to know WHY it hangs up, and why Outlook 2016 does not issue a fix through an update?
It affects graphics - screen redraw and older hardware can't handle it. You shouldn't need to disable it on newer hardware - which is anything made since around 2014.
They do fix some issues in updates but it really depends on the cause - for this particular one, it really depends on your hardware...
I have two users, Outlook 2013, randomly when composing mail their Outlook's go unresponsive to the point you have to kill the process in taskmgr. Before I do that, the only thing weird I see is Outlook eating 25 CPU at all times. Once killed and re-opened, it will work for a period of time until ultimately it does it again. I tried the Hardware Acceleration method a long while ago and it still happens. Thanks a lot Billy Gates and Co.
Does it work in Safe mode? What addins are installed?
Thanks alottttt !!! solved my problem !!!
Thank-you Diane. Your article saved me a world of heart ache and hair pulling. Something I also found is that I had to disable the acceleration from one of the other Office 2013 programs, as I was unable to do it from in Outlook 2013. Didn't see anyone else post that, so I thought maybe it will help someone also.
My Office 2013 apps hang occasionally after resume from standby or connecting/disconnecting secondary monitor. However, I found another workaround, hinted by this line:
>> (using a non-Aero theme would also fix it)
So, what I'm doing is just going to desktop properties and switching to a Basic theme and back to Aero (using Win7). This resets something in Windows and unfreezes Office apps w/o having to kill them or disable hardware acceleration.
I am amazed how Office 2007, 2010 and 2013, while bringing interesting productivity enhancements are becoming increasingly less stable in most basic aspects that were rock solid for years. And Outlook is usually at the forefront :) (rant mode off)
This fixed my issue. Thank you very much.
@Diane
Enabling this option (To disable Hardware Acceleration) resulted in an immediate improvement performance-wise of OL2013. Unfortunately though it seems in the 2-3 hours after making that change (and restarting OL) , OL has once again slowed back down although its not anywhere near as bad as before I disable hardware acceleration.
Not sure if it matters or not but we use App-V and so my IT admin is telling me that OL should not be slow/lockup no matter what setting is enabled/disabled since OL is not actually running on my system.
Thoughts on OL2013 being slow when running under App-V?
I'm not sure if Hardware acceleration will affect App-V. It's streamed, but it still needs to use local resources to display and it helped when you disabled it. (App-V is not my area of expertise.)
Are the other office apps slow? Are you using online or cached mode? (Online is best with remote desktop applications.)