Outlook is slow....

For the last several months, Outlook 2003 has periodically been real slow. The most common time would be first thing in the morning, so I wasn't sure whether it was network related or startup related. I would also experience it occasionally when sending an email... it would hang for a long time before starting the spell checker, and then between words it would hang again.

I did some research, and though it has not been long enough to be certain it has been corrected, it looks promising. Here are the suggestions that I tried:

• Archive everything older than 3 months (it was 6). This should reduce the size of your PST file -- mine was 2.6 MB. My understanding is that newer versions of Outlook do not have problems with large PST files, but why take a chance? Tools | Options >> Other >> AutoArchive...
  
• Start a new outcmd.dat file (C:\Documents and Settings\[your user name]\application data\microsoft\outlook), as it could be corrupt. Close Outlook, rename the file, start Outlook -- a new version will be created.
  
• Remove unnecessary Add-ins. Tools | Options >> Other >> Advanced Options >> Add-In Manager... and COM Add-ins...; Close and Re-open Outlook.
  

Here are some URLs where I found some guidance:

• The David Allen Company User Forums
• Rocket Computers
• Geeks to Go
• Or search Google with "outlook 2003 slow"

Another fix of course, is if you can, switch to Thunderbird.