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Help! My Email Opens Slow

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› Problems › Help! My Email Opens Slow

Last reviewed on February 13, 2018

This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant.

A common complaint about Outlook goes something like this:

The reading pane in Outlook 2003 is slow when I switch from different folders. The pane takes about 20 seconds to come up to the current email. I have XP with SP2 installed. I have no other problems except this one.

There are three possible causes to the problem:

  1. Instant messenger. The fix is to disable the link to Instant Messenger on Outlook's Tools, Options, Other tab.
  2. Network connectivity issues when you are using mapped network drives, including slow networks or inaccessible mapped drives. The fix is to uncheck the box for the dialog to always ask whether to open/save the attachments or disable mapped drives.
  3. Alternative input support in Office 2003. This allows you to use speech or handwriting instead of typing. Disable alternative input following instructions in How to turn off the speech recognition and the handwriting recognition features in Office 2003.
Help! My Email Opens Slow was last modified: February 13th, 2018 by Diane Poremsky

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About Diane Poremsky

A Microsoft Outlook Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 1999, Diane is the author of several books, including Outlook 2013 Absolute Beginners Book. She also created video training CDs and online training classes for Microsoft Outlook. You can find her helping people online in Outlook Forums as well as in the Microsoft Answers and TechNet forums.

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Heinz Mayr
February 11, 2017 8:42 am

For about one week my outlook email takes for ever to open. Sometime i have to click on it again after waiting for more than a minute

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Diane Poremsky
Author
Reply to  Heinz Mayr
February 12, 2017 7:13 pm

Is it faster in Safe mode? Is this with your msn address? Is the account set up as Exchange ActiveSync or Microsoft Exchange?

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crenee
October 27, 2015 6:23 pm

do you have an update for this for Outlook 2010? Thanks.

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Diane Poremsky
Author
Reply to  crenee
October 27, 2015 11:06 pm

No, not at this time, but #2 would apply to the newer versions. A lot of accounts or a corrupt data file would also cause it to open slow.

Does it open faster in Safe mode? To open Outlook in Safe mode: Close Outlook then hold Ctrl as you click on the Outlook icon. You'll get a message asking if you want to start in Safe mode. Click Ok.

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