How to fix slow Outlook 2003-2007 loading dataset problem

Posted on April 4, 2008 at 5:22 am

Microsoft Outlook 2007 running super slow? Still loading dataset for you? I just love it when Microsoft tries to make their software better by adding a crapload of useless features to them! I have no idea why it would take 8 hours to load a single dataset! I don’t even know what the heck the dataset is supposed to be! We’re just talking email here right?

Unfortunately, making sense and talking about Micorsoft products at the same time is usually not possible, so you’ll just have to live with the fact that each newer version of Windows and Office is only going to slow your computer down eve more!

So if you’re in the middle of checking your email or creating a new rule and suddenly everything grinds to a halt with “loading dataset” showing up in the status bar, you’ll have to take some harsh actions against Outlook if you ever want to be able to do any work.

Here’s a couple of ways you can speed up Outlook 2007 and hopefully get rid of that annoying loading dataset message:

1. Disable Useless Outlook Add-ins

Yes, they are useless, except for one maybe. In order to disable all of the add-ons that are active by default, you’ll need to open Outlook 2007 in Administrative mode.

First, go to C:\Programs\Microsoft Office\Office12, right click on the Outlook.exe program and choose “Run as Administrator”.

Then, once Outlook loads, go to Tools from the top menu and then Trust Center.

Click on Add-ins in the left hand menu and then click on the Go button at the very bottom of the dialog where it says Manage and has a drop down box.

Now you’ll get a list of add-ins that you can uncheck. It is suggest that you un-check ALL of the add-ins except for the Windows Indexing.

Go ahead and choose the other option in the drop-down box, which is Exchange Client Extensions. Do not disable the Exchange add-ins if you’re connected to a corporate network.

This one change significantly increased the speed of my Outlook 2007 installation. It also helped to reduce the number of instances of loading dataset.

2. Disable RSS feeds in Outlook 2007

Another annoying default setting in Outlook 2007 is the fact that it has a good number of RSS feeds that come pre-configured and that eat up resources in terms of synchronization. Outlook will keep checking for updates to these feeds and therefore slow things down even more. If you use another reader for your RSS feeds, like Google Reader, make sure to remove the RSS feeds from Outlook 2007.

In Outlook 2007, go to Tools, Account Settings and then click on RSS Feeds.

As you can see, I’ve removed all of my RSS feeds so that no CPU power is being used up for this purpose! Just click the remove button for each RSS feed listed.

3. Compact your Outlook.pst personal folder

One other thing you can do to speed up Outlook 2007 is the compact your email folders so that they are not as large. It’s best to delete out any emails with large attachments or even to archive some emails if your file is larger than 1GB.

In Outlook 2007, click on File and then Data File Management.

Click on the Data Files tab and then double-click on the data file that you wan to compact.

Now go ahead and click on the Compact Now button to reduce the size of the personal folder file.

That’s all of the methods I could figure out so far! If you know of any other method that will help speed up the super slow Outlook 2007, do post a comment and let us know! Hope it helps! Enjoy!

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» Filed Under MS Office Tips

5 Responses to “How to fix slow Outlook 2003-2007 loading dataset problem”

Nelson said on : April 4th, 2008 at 10:40 am

Hi there Aseem, good post about outlook 2007 tips. I work in a big corporation as a system administrator, and even though we are still using office 2003, outlook is always a problem. people downloading add-ons plugins smiley packages etc.

I will advice my users according to your recommendations.

I always read your blog and find it very interesting from a technical perspective. keep up the good work.

thanks,

Nelson

akishore said on : April 4th, 2008 at 10:45 am

Hi Nelson,

Thanks for the comment. At my office, we’re still using Office 2003! There are a couple of laptops that we have with Office 2007 and they cause the most problems by far. Not only is Outlook 2007 very slow (by default), but it causes our IBM ThinkPad’s to crash a lot!

Again, thanks for reading the blog, I’m glad you enjoy the content.

Nelson said on : April 4th, 2008 at 11:50 am

you use Thinkpads at your office? how are they? my boss somehow doesn’t like them even though we can get better deals with IMB than Dell. I heard office 2007 and exchange 2007 work pretty sleek though, we are planning to upgrade our exchange 2003 to 2007 let’s see how it goes.

Tara said on : April 4th, 2008 at 3:00 pm

Great tips! As much as everyone loves to hate Microsoft, I’ve used other email programs (begrudgingly) and I have to say that Outlook is far superior, regardless of speed. Hopefully these tips will perk it right up. Thanks!

Barbara Wade said on : May 10th, 2008 at 7:50 am

I’m trying to apply the above to my ancient, 2002 version. Earlier this week, MS auto updates prompted me to download something to do with SP3, which as a dutiful MS user, I did. Starting Outlook has been next to IMPOSSIBLE since then! Freezes, not respond messages . . I even did a system restore to BEFORE I hit the fateful “install” button, but it is still TERRIBLE!!!! It takes a good 10 to 15 minutes to load. Any suggestions for this older version? (Other than buy a new computer and new software.) Help! (and Thanks.)