Make Outlook Faster by Disabling Unnecessary Add-Ins

If Microsoft Outlook loads slower than dirt and hangs every time you try to do anything, there’s a very good chance that your problem is an Outlook plug-in gone haywire—but we can easily disable them.

You’ll want to be careful not to disable an add-in that you actually need, but I’ve used this technique many times over the years to make Outlook run much faster.

Disable Outlook Add-ons

Open up the Trust Center by navigating to Tools –> Trust Center on the menu.

On the left-hand pane, choose Add-ins, and then near the bottom of the window you’ll see a button that will let you manage your COM Add-ins.

From this window, you can disable anything that you aren’t using. My recommendation would be to start off by only disabling non-Microsoft add-ins, restart Outlook and see if that solves your slowdown problems.

You’ll notice that some of the add-ins in the list won’t let you remove them under Windows 7 or Vista—for instance, if you want to remove Microsoft Outlook Mobile Service, which lets you send text messages to cell phones—you will need to close Outlook and re-open it as administrator.

If you are using Windows 7 and have it pinned to your taskbar, you can close Outlook and then hold down the Ctrl+Shift keys while you click on the taskbar icon. Repeat the steps above, and you should be able to remove the other Add-ins without problems.