Outlook emails, are you getting crushed?
Do you live-and-breathe Microsoft Outlook for your email and messaging? Does this sound familiar: Slow and erratic performance, Outlook locks up, attachments seem too large to handle or send, slow searches, too many archives and separate .pst files? Outlook is the number one solution for my clients, and over the past year I have been testing-and-using a number of solutions that can greatly improve the performance of Outlook email. I look forward to sharing these with you here. But first, a little history and perspective…
Outlook was originally introduced in the first releases of the Microsoft Office Suite over 10 years ago (are there still any Office 98 users out there?). Microsoft intended to create the comprehensive tool that combined email, calendar and contacts — and in Outlook they succeeded to an overwhelming degree. As Outlook has become the primary corporate and business email tool of choice, it is also a victim of its own success.
“Outlook (and other mail programs) have been getting crushed under the weight of our own ravenous hunger for ultra-fast-bandwidth and no-limit email handling.”
What do I mean by this? Think about it. Would you believe, Microsoft never intended for Outlook email to also function as a document management system? Yet that is exactly how many of us use it whether we meant to or not. With the ability to easily track-and-handle hundreds or even thousands of email-messages and attachments, Outlook is exactly what so many of us rely on for organizing-and-finding our mission critical documents.
Over the past 10 years, as we have moved from dial-up to slow DSL to T1/Cable/Fiber speeds, we all try to push more-and-more through our email. Outlook (and other mail programs) have been getting crushed under the weight of our own ravenous hunger for ultra-fast-bandwidth and no-limit email handling.
There are many simple solutions and practices to help slay the dragon of information/email overwhelm. In future entries, I will begin discussing some of them, but if you’re in pain now, don’t wait. Feel free to post or email your thoughts and questions. I look forward to hearing from you.
— Ethan Feerst, The I.T. Therapist
Category: The IT Therapist
