Outlook 2007 doesn’t load in Windows 10 – SOLVED!

How to fix the problem in Windows 10 which makes Microsoft Outlook 2007 take ages to start up or appears to hang or crash.

Windows 10 Outlook 2007 slow to load

I recently upgraded to Windows 10 (from Windows 8.1 Pro) and everything was going pretty well. Then all of a sudden Microsoft Outlook (2007) was taking forever to load up. It appeared to have crashed but if left long enough it loaded up.

I eventually realised what was causing the problem – Windows Indexing. I did not have Indexing switched on before but while I was searching for a file in Windows Explorer a message popped up to say I could speed up searching by turning indexed search on. So I clicked it. That’s when I noticed the problem.

I guess it is because I am terrible at email housekeeping and my Outlook message store is massive with thousands of messages spread across hundreds of folders. It’s going to take Windows 10 a very long time to index everything I have in Outlook – but there is no need for that. I am quite happy to use Outlook’s built in search facility.

Option 1: Wait.

The problem is most likely because Windows is taking a long time to index everything in your Outlook folders. If you wait long enough the process will complete and Outlook might load up quickly again.

Option 2: Switch off search indexing for Outlook

All you have to do is remove Outlook from the locations Windows Search is set to index. Here’s how to do that:

First of all, re-start Windows and do not load Outlook. Next you need to open the Indexing Options settings:

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1. Click Start and type ‘indexing’

You should see Indexing Options appear, press enter or click it to open. If that doesn’t work, go to settings and search for indexing:

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In Settings type ‘indexing’ into the search box

After a while (it might take a very long while!) you’ll see a window like this:

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Click ‘Modify’ to change the locations

After another while, possible longer than before, this window will appear:

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Untick the box next to Microsoft Office Outlook and click OK

Next time you load Outlook it should open just as quick as it did before.

Let everything settle down

While you have been getting frustrated with Outlook taking so long to load Windows has actually been trying to index it. This explains some of the long waits in the steps above. So now you have told Windows not to index Outlook it has to go and remove all those entries it made. That’s going to take some time and while it is doing it other things like searching from the start menu for apps and things may not work. So I’d suggest just leaving it to get on with things in the background.

It worked for me….

This is how I fixed the problem. I can’t say it will work for everyone. In addition, I guess if you just left everything as it was then eventually Windows Search Indexing will have indexed everything in Outlook and the delay in loading might go away on it’s own. But I don’t need Windows to have the overhead of gazillions of messages in Outlook to have to look through whenever I do a search in Windows.

If you found this useful to you please drop me a message in the comments below, thanks.

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