Troubleshoot Your Problems With The Slow Outlook Address Book

Slow Outlook is a problem that bothers many users. The slowness can affect various utilities of the application such as Address Book, email, calendar and so forth. What to do when the application faces such unexpected errors, when you have to do some serious work quickly? Well, reading this article will get you some basic idea about what causes the slowness with the Outlook Address Book and how to get this problem resolved.

Operating environment and the cause of Outlook problem

The problem is often diagnosed with Outlook 2010 employing Exchange Server 2010 SP2. The problem is also reported on the same version of Outlook which runs in Cached Exchange Mode. The problem occurs when users access the address book for the first time after launching the application. They will have to wait for a couple of minutes until they could add recipients to To or Cc fields. The problem appears no more after that.

As per the Outlook tech experts, the problem shows up often on Outlook applications that employ the default Global Address Book list. The best solution to fix the problem is to reset the address book setting to All Users Address List. This can be done by navigating to Tools>Options>Address Book>Outlook Contacts Book Settings. Check the box in front of All Users Address Book that says When Opening the address book, show this address list first.

Exchange 2010 Offline Address Book

If you are looking to access the Exchange 2010 Offline Address Book, you need to ensure that the application is able to access the address book service of the Exchange Server via internet connection since the Default Offline Address List you have in it does not consist of the default Global Address List. In some cases, this can result in unexpected delays.

Troubleshooting the problem

• Launch your Outlook application.
• Navigate to Options followed by Tools.
• Select Address Book Settings and change the current address book list to Global Address Book list. 
• If you are using Outlook Exchange Server 2010, make sure that the default offline address list configuration is reset. Include both Default Global Address List and All Users Address List in the settings.

These instructions should have helped you fix the freezing problems with the Outlook Address Book. In case these steps didn’t work, get in touch with the Outlook help desk for assistance.