Outlook freezes

[jparnold]

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.