Since I returned from a 6 week trip I have been having problems using OUTLOOK 2010.
Every now and then when SENDING an email and especially, but not all the time, when I have attached a file, Outlook seems to freeze (I can wait 2 or 3 minutes and it never finishes sending). When I close it down I get a window telling me that Outlook has had a problem and is trying to solve it.
Today after clicking SEND for an email with a small attached file (500kb) the window appeared almost instantly telling me that there was a problem and it was trying to solve it.



There have also been occasional problems starting up Outlook when it takes much longer than usual to start up displaying "loading profile" for much longer than normal.

Lastly it appears that everytime I do start up Outlook it is re reading all the emails left on the ISP's mail server.
I used to use a different (old) email client which downloaded my email from the email server and stored it on my hard drive.
This also seems apparent as when I DELETE an email it can sometimes take a long time as if it is communicating with the mail server.
Can it be that I have Outlook (and my ISP mail server) set up NOT to download my email to my hard drive and/or to leave my email on the server to be read every time I start up Outlook.

Sorry for so many questions but using Outlook seems a lot more cumbersome than my old email client.

Outlook can be confusing and difficult to use, but it's easily the best mail client out there for enterprise-level functionality.

So are you using an IMAP connection or a full exchange account? You can find this out by right clicking the mailbox and clicking "Account Properties" > "Account Settings"

If you struggle using the above method (I don't use Outlook 2010 and so cannot check it's correct) you can also go to the mail section of your control panel, and view your email accounts that way.

Hello

Thanks for your interest.

I am using IMAP. Not sure if this is a requirement of my ISP or not as when I changed ISP I was forced to start using something other than my OLD but well liked EUDORA and could not get Outlook configured so used my ISP Help line who 'walked me through' the set up telling me what to enter where.
Since posting my question Outlook has not been causing too many problems BUT it does seem quite slow at times especially when I select a new email in my Inbox and wait for the contents to be displayed.
Once again I don't know how Outlook 'behaves' when new email is read from the server (not sure if it needs to re read email from the server each time). Eudora used to write all email to my hard drive and delete it from the server.

JP,

On your old email client you used a POP account, with this client you're using IMAP, that seems to be the difference you are experiencing. POP is great if you only ever access your emails on one device, so if this is the case, I would recommend going through the same process as you did last time to set up this IMAP account, but choosing POP at the appropriate time instead.

IMAP accounts can often be a lot slower than POP and Exchange accounts, there are some things you can examine if you wish to keep the current settings. Please review the following article for tips on how to speed up your IMAP account.

http://www.msoutlook.info/question/540

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the explanation.
I think that I once tried to set up using POP and when I did the "test" it failed (rather the ISP didn't seem to want to know about it).
I will try again.
Do I assume correctly that I merely change the 'settings' on my current Outlook setup or start again? If I need to start again do I need to uninstall and reinstall Outlook?

Thanks

You can not convert an IMAP account back to POP, however the process of recreating your account is relatively simple and does not require re-installation of Outlook. You may find the following article useful, however the process will depend on both your version of Outlook and Windows platform.

http://www.msoutlook.info/question/705

Let me know if you have any problems, I have alerts set up for this thread.