How in the Tech

Gain speed in Outlook by disabling add-ins

By Adam Myers ⋅ September 28, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is a necessary evil in many workplaces across the country. On the surface, Outlook provides a ton of worthwhile functionality – email, calendar, tasks, contacts are all vital in any productive business environment. Unfortunately, Outlook crumbles under it’s own feature set and quickly becomes a bloated and sluggish experience from start up to close down. Yet millions stick with it faithfully because it’s better than the alternatives or their employer is so far ingrained in the Microsoft platform that no other product can be integrated successfully.

Outlook, like Windows in general, generally doesn’t start out slow as molasses. Only over time and extended use does it become crusty around the edges. If your Outlook is behaving worse than you remember, it may come down to a few trouble add-ins that get installed – generally without your knowledge. For example, did you know iTunes installs an Outlook add-in? Chances are you have a few add-ins enabled in Outlook that aren’t necessary and it may result in a measurable speed-up if they were  disabled.

1. Open the Trust Center in Outlook 2007 through Tools->Trust Center.



2. Select Add-ins from the left hand menu and then click Go on the resulting screen.



3. With the launched COM Add-ins dialog you can deselect any unnecessary add-ins. I generally recommend to start slow and disable any non-Microsoft and see if that resolves any performance issues you are seeing.

This tweak only takes a few minutes and may save you a ton of frustration as you use Outlook day to day. Give it a try and let me know if it helps you!