Software
Microsoft Releases Outlook 2007 Hotfix for Performance Improvements
Thanks to good friend James Kendrick at jkOnTheRun for passing this tip along. Microsoft has released a Hotfix or Outlook 2007 that is geared towards improving performance, especially for those who have large .pst and .ost files. Apparently this was released in February but it escaped our radar until now.
Apparently this will get pushed through via Microsoft Update, put you can apply for the Hotfix and download it now via this link.
The article walks through quite a bit about what the Hotfix contains (and it contains a lot) and how it works. This Hotfix comes ahead of an SP2 release for Microsoft Office, and I guess it was deemed crucial enough to push it out ahead of time. Remember the usual caveats apply when it comes to applying updates and Hotfixes.
Outlook users know that Microsoft has always recommended keeping .pst and .ost files small for better performance, but with this update they’ve changed the expectation set for the data store files as follows:
- Up to 5 gigabytes (GB): This size should provide a good user experience on most hardware.
- Between 5 GB and 10 GB: This size is typically hardware dependent. Therefore, if you have a fast hard disk and much RAM, your experience will be better. However, slower hard drives, such as drives that are typically found on portable computers or early generation solid state drives (SSDs), experience some application pauses when the drives respond.
- More than 10 GB: This size is where short pauses begin to occur on most hardware.
- Very large, such as 25 GB or larger: This size increases the frequency of the short pauses, especially while you are downloading new e-mail. Alternatively, you can use Send/Receive groups to manually sync your mail.
Via bink.nu
loyukfai
03/26/2009 at 8:39 am
As far as I can tell from reading the Outlook blog, this will *not* be pushed through Microsoft/Windows Update as an individual update, but instead rolled into SP2 which will be released at a later time.
https://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/default.aspx
Warner Crocker
03/26/2009 at 9:01 am
I think you’re correct.
smh
03/26/2009 at 12:18 pm
I have installed this hotfix and found it lacking :( If any the speed with which outlook operates after the install of this hotfix is lower than before. I normally have 8 .pst files that are about 5-8gb, recently i have been porting all my e-mail to an imap server as i don’t need all my e-mail on my computer this was i huge performance boost – the .pst files are only 200-500mb now.
I had hoped that this could give some better processing of the mail in outlook but it seems to me that it slows the process down a bit – the sending/receiving process is slowed down even more than before:(
The positive about this hotfix is that outlook starts up more quickly and when loading mail folders it’s snappy :) almost instantly.
Warner Crocker
03/26/2009 at 12:28 pm
smh,
I’m actually seeing an opposite result in limited testing. I’m seeing a boost in overall speed especially regarding Send/Receive.
smh
03/26/2009 at 2:26 pm
hm…. I think I need to type a little slower :P, made some really stupid mistypes.
Warner, which e-mail account did you use? My personal one on local servers are loading as before the install but my Gmail account doesn’t. Normally I also have my Hotmail accounts connected but I’m afraid that they would slow Outlook down even further :(
Circa 1 month ago i reformatted and haven’t installed my Hotmail accounts as Outlook prior to the reformat was really slow – I couldn’t even send/receive because Outlook would just lock up.
One other thing I noticed was that if I didn’t install all the updates for Outlook, Outlook would be more stable and run more smoothly – I have no idea why though.
Before i switched to Win 7 I used Outlook Express to manage my e-mails and never experienced instability or any other problems. I wish MS would learn from Outlook Express and somehow implement the best parts of the program in Outlook.
GoodThings2Life
03/26/2009 at 4:52 pm
Wow, smh, you’ve just stated the EXACT OPPOSITE of every rational story I’ve heard regarding OE and Outlook!
In my own experiences, I’ve never seen Outlook balk the way OE does with large mailboxes. And I agree with Warner, my Outlook is much faster since installing this.
If you’ve seen a decrease, I would suspect you have bigger issues with your system like serious drive fragmentation or you’re using a 5400RPM hard drive.