Im having these headaches again.....

I have Outlook 2002 (part of the Office Professional package that came with my T30 laptop), and the thing seems to just hang and hang.

I had similar issues some months back, but somehow they went away. Now they are back.

I do autoarchive everytime the stupid program asks me to.... and Ive even tried detect and repair a couple of times but it doesnt seem to help.

I wonder if I should update to the latest version of the MS Suite products?

Question is..... if I want to update to the new Office versions, can this be done on top of my existing programs, and will the installer(s) do this intelligently while retaining all my current settings and data directories (the outlook contacts and email files are what worry me most), or will I have to uninstall everything I have now and re-install everything again (including all the Outlook data files)?

Thanks.

Gaucho100K:

I don't have problems with Outlook. My version in "about" says: Microsoft Outlook SP-3. You may check your version!?!

May be you just run an update via Internet ... like I did. And all the data, files did stay intact. BTW, you may have a copy of all your data in Palm as well?!
When I remember it correct, during the on-line-update the program asked to insert one or more office disks.
One think is a little troublesome after the update: When you send an e-mail from another program (like ACE..), Outlook asks you "is this O.K.".

One thing is for sure, Outlook 2003 is much faster than 2002 when remote. You should be able to upgrade fine unless you have some crazy custom programs that have specific hooks into 2002.

Go ahead and update to 2003. Outlook 2003 is much quicker and yes it will import all your previous settings if you install/upgrade on top of what is currently there.

Given the nature of Outlook (i.e., it can connect to the variety of services and directories), your Outlook problems may not actually be caused by Outlook. For example, Outlook may seem to have hung but it's just waiting for a mail server, for example, to respond.

How did the problems go away the first time? Can you describe your problems? (What you were doing at the time? Were you trying to check email, for instance?)

Yes, as others said, Outlook 2003 is better and faster and it's more user-friendly in that it tells you what it's doing more often than before. OTOH, it may not solve your problem if it isn't Outlook that's causing it.

Also, as others said, upgrading (as long as you won't uninstall the 'old' version first) will keep your data. Outlook 2003 will automatically pick them up. You can/should of course export (back up) your data first before starting your upgrade exercise.

Im going to try to explain the problems:

1) I have an anti-spam software called Cloudmark installed on top of my Outlook. The weird thing is that right after I installed it and used it with dial up, the performance was excellent. Now that Im back in my office on a cable modem, the Outlook has gone nuts.

2) Outlook is taking some 5-6 minutes to do things like delete emails.... and I mean 10-15 emails, not a huge bunch of them. During this time, I just have the hourglass and cant to anything else.

3) I get the message: "a program is trying to access your Outlook address book" or something similar, its the same message I get when I synch with my palm. I have to manually allow Outlook to be accessed for 1-2-5 or 10 minutes. This is a minor annoyance that Im willing to live with, but I wonder if it has to do with my other problems...

4) When Outlook hangs, I will sometimes get the "not responding" message on the window title bar. Also, if I activate the task manager, when its hung I also get the not responding label in the task manager

5) If I forcefully close Outlook, sometimes it will complete the task it was doing before it went dead, ie. delete some files out of a SPAM directory

6) I dont think its a mail server thing, since even though I do have a cable modem, Ive configured my outlook to send and receive mails only when manually prompt it to do so.

7) Even simple tasks like reading an email take ages, when I click it from the Inbox I quickly get the header of the email.... but the body doesnt show up... I just get a blank white background and the task manager shows Outlook as "not responding".

Do I have a virus....? I have AVG anti-virus software installed and updated, so this cannot be the problem.

Any tips & ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks very much.

One more thing. AVG seems to find viruses in emails every now and then, but I dont seem to understand what it does with them. I wonder if perhaps the AVG software is not the culprit here, and not the Spam software?

If you are using PocketMirror to sync, upgrade to the latest version 3.1.6 (it's a free upgrade if you already have v3) -- this includes a "fix" which automatically presses the button to make that dialog box go away.

Steve

You need to do a little detective work to see what is hanging Outlook. Or the upgrade may just fix it all. However, you should make sure you don't have two anti-virus tools running as that will definitely cause problems. And you could try de-installing the anti-spam tool to see if that fixes things. If not, deinstall other suspects til outlook runs fine. Then reinstall what you need.

I agree with Stimpy. I don't think the problem is with Outlook, it's likely to be something running on top of it, be it your anti-spam or your anti-virus. It may also be your anti-spam is anti your anti-virus...

From your symptoms, it sounds like something is checking every bit of information coming into Outlook (i.e., retrieving mail) or when Outlook is trying to access every bit of information (loading your mail for you to see), be it checking for virus or checking for spam (the anti-spam doesn't necessarily just scan mail coming in for the first time).

If you can track down what's causing the message as you outlined in #3, it may help. It's a security thing inside Outlook. It sounds like whatever is causing your grief is causing that too.

BTW, Outlook 2003 has a built-in spam filter. It's not excellent, but it's OK.

Thanks for the tips. I think Im going to have to go ahead and kill the SPAM software.... but Im afraid its just that I dont know how to use it properly. Anybody else use Cloudmark products?

Ive removed the Cloudmark SpamNet software and things have improved a little, still, Outlook continues to be slower than normal. My current Anti-Virus software is AVG 6.0 (free version). Virus definitions are updates as of 7/4/2004 and Ive just run a full system check which did not uncover any viruses.

Is AVG causing my problems...?

I used to support MS Office products for a living, so I would like to offer a few suggestions that I did not yet see mentioned.

You are likely using a *.PST file to store your emails in Outlook. The problem is, is that these files corrupt really easily. But don't worry too much at this point, since you can often repair the damage by using scanpst.exe to repair the file. Make a backup first, then let the program inspect your file for errors. Even if your *.PST file is only a few months old, you will still often find it needs to be repaired. In addition to regularly backing up and repairing the *.PST file, you need to choose to compact the PST file when inside Outlook. If you do a search on how to compact the PST file from Microsoft's help pages, it will show you step by step.

The other common problem was that the Outlook profile itself would become corrupted, thus causing Outlook to run really slow. Create a new Outlook profile from the control panel and try that.

If this doesn't help, let me know. I will check this thread later tonight to see how you get on ..

Robert

Robert, thanks a million for taking time to help me with this. I desperately need to get my Outlook back to normal and very much appreciate your kind gesture.

Some follow up questions from my side would be:

1) Im not sure what an Outlook profile is, but in any event, can I just create an identical profile with a new name to solve the problem? When I do this, do I need (have?) to delete the old profile?

2) Regarding scanning & repairing the PST file, how do I get to and run this scanpst.exe file you mention? I assume its not in the menu of Outlook, or...? My Outlook file is very old... Ive carried over my Outlook file from at least 2 previous versions of Outlook - I do this every time I switch laptops, so this is probably one of my issues.

3) Regarding the PST file, doesnt the detect and repair function in MS Office do this PST scanning and verifying or am I confusing features? Ive tried the detect and repair function a couple of times to no avail.

4) One option Im considering is just upgrading my MS Office Pro 2002 to the newer version 2003. If I choose to do this, will the re-installation also solve my corruption issues? I would expect the profile would perhaps be fixed, but if I choose to do the intelligent update installation that leaves my source data files (including PST email and contact files for Outlook) intact, perhaps I wont be addressing the corrupted PST file issue, right...?

Thanks again for your assistance with this. Im off to use the search/help function to see which fixes I can do myself.

Cheers,
Gaucho

there are some possible issues here. Are you on a network with a networked version of outlook and your data? Can you get to outlook via outlook web access.?

If yes, then you may have what is called and .ost file and not the pst file. Usually a network admin will setup your data file on the network, then set you up as a user on that network.

When you log into a computer on the network, it looks for a local version of the .ost file, which is the primary file that Outlook local client will look for. Isf there is not such a file, it will open the network version of your data file and display that.

A .pst file is a local copy of data, that remains local. As well, if you had a .ost file, the typical setup on your local laptop and have syncnonized to your local client/laptop, then all the data from the network is in your local .ost file.

When you connect to the network again, dialup or in the office it will sync any changes.

If THAT is the case, then once you do a sync with the network agian, you can safely (read, if you are confident or with the help of a network admin) fully delete the .ost file from your local laptop profile. taht can be found in C:\documents and settings\user name\ . . .ect. Just do a search for .ost and include search hidden.

once deleted if you outlook is setup correctly you can recreate it again, fresh and new and then do a new sync.

THIS is the file that is often corrupted. So, if that is the way your networking is setup then make sure to do a fix repair on THAT file.

Another point. with older outlook once this file got to be like 2-3 GB, then there were some clear problems. Also, it was a gross number of mails, like 15,000 or something and the applicatoin just puked.

Also, if you networking login has changed recently, you might be downloading all the .ost file from the network over and over again. this would indeed take a LONG time if hte file is large.