Outlook 2013 - Slow Performance?

Has anyone made the switch from Office 2010 to 2013 and see the performance decrease difference? I disabled hardware acceleration and animations like many of the posts you will find in searches suggest, and that did fix the issues going between Mail, Calendar, and People...

BUT, is anyone seeing slowness when you first click reply and when you click send on an email? It seems to sit there for 5-7 seconds. If you start typing, it normally puts what you typed in to the email, but it is still annoying. Overall I really do not like Outlook 2013 too much (2010 MUCH better visually and stability wise), but you cannot use ActiveSync with 2010. So, 2013 it is...

Anyone have any fixes?

Dennis

Posted 2013-06-16T23:37:45.700

Reputation: 211

1You failed to mention the specific version of Windows! – mdpc – 2015-03-09T17:31:16.803

Have you tried disabling any add-ons you don't need? – Austin ''Danger'' Powers – 2013-06-16T23:49:22.883

Yes, did that as well as safe mode. No difference. – Dennis – 2013-06-17T00:16:55.243

Answers

For me what worked was checking 'Use Cached Exchange Mode' under File/Account Settings/Change Account/Server Settings.
(Earlier, I tried checking the "Disable hardware graphics acceleration" (from File/Options/Advanced/Display) and the Safe Mode (hit Ctrl while starting Outlook) but both didn't help.

EBell

Posted 2013-06-16T23:37:45.700

Reputation: 31

Disabling Hardware accelerating worked for me. Not sure why accelerating is actually de-accelerating Outlook... Any clue ? – Milind Thakkar – 2016-02-02T06:44:19.037

This worked for me too. – Fahad – 2018-03-15T14:33:28.663

You're not the only one. It seems to be a common theme that Outlook 2013 is slower than Outlook 2010 (other users report an astonishing 7-second speed difference as well).

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officeitpropreview/thread/5c94c06f-d6ca-4447-8b41-d9bd52ad3e65

Judging from user feedback, this looks like the best suggestion on that forum:

In my case, text just disappears sometimes after inserting paragraphs in text with footnotes that causes the document to repaginate. Also, on one of my machines the typing speeds gradually but steadily slows down until I can watch characters appear almost only one per second. Saving resets the fight with the slouch.

Disabling hardware acceleration, subpixel positioning and showing content while dragging may have helped with the speed thing [slow performance].

Also check this out- goes into detail on disabling hardware acceleration. Worked for someone:

Increase Outlook 2013 performance?

Austin ''Danger'' Powers

Posted 2013-06-16T23:37:45.700

Reputation: 5 992

Yeah, did that on the hardware acceleration. That affects the switching between contacts and calendar and mail mostly. I really do not have any issues with the scrolling. Who knows. All I do know is that while I am a Microsoft fan and normally 100% fine with new product releases, this is a pretty big F up on their part with Office 2013. 2010 just sooo much better overall. Grrrr. – Dennis – 2013-06-17T19:27:13.647

I stuck with 2010 because I had a hunch the latest version would have some problems that would be hard to work around- and it looks like I was right. Perhaps I was cynical because it came out at the same time as Windows 8 (which I also will be slow to upgrade to for many reasons). Let us know if you ever find an acceptable fix. Sorry I don't use it myself so can't speak from experience. – Austin ''Danger'' Powers – 2013-06-18T01:20:56.003

Yeah, I know. I have seriously contemplated just going back to 2010, but I will not be able to use Exchange ActiveSync if I do. Tough call. Keep all email in check with ActiveSync or go back to POP & wait til Outlook is more stable..... what to do what to do... – Dennis – 2013-06-18T12:08:05.267

I also had this problem. I tried all the recommended fixes such as disabling hardware acceleration, checking add-ins etc... Everything was slow. In my case, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth I noticed that I had 2 Skydrive accounts connected, or rather 1 connected and another needing log-in info (this was my job Skydrive and my personal Skydrive). So I removed the personal Skydrive connection and got an instant speed boost. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.

By the way this is accessed in File/ Office Account

gorf

Posted 2013-06-16T23:37:45.700

Reputation: 11

Have you tried disabling the MS-Word editor integration with Outlook? That time sounds like the time it takes word to start up / create an object.

More information is here: http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/wordhtml.htm

Glen Starrett

Posted 2013-06-16T23:37:45.700

Reputation: 16

I also have tried disabling graphics hardware acceleration, disabling add-ons, playing with exchange server caching settings in the account options, and other tips from this thread, with no real improvement. What really seems to have helped is running outlook in safe mode: "outlook/safe". The person who posted this got downvoted, but it's the only thing that has brought performance back to what I had with the same setup using 2010. I am now curious why this fixes all of the problems, since I assume this is disabling some new feature that I should be able to disable via the options menu.

Lee Crawford

Posted 2013-06-16T23:37:45.700

Reputation: 1

-1

Enabling safe mode forces Outlook to cache all of the files like 2010 did. To do this, hit Windows+R, then type outlook /safe. 2013 works great now.

user395355

Posted 2013-06-16T23:37:45.700

Reputation: 1

Op has mentioned that he already tried safe mode (im not the downvoter btw) – thilina R – 2015-04-17T04:32:58.407