Microsoft Outlook has become slow to respond

Need_More_Money_2

I've been using Microsoft Outlook 2002 SP3 (running on Windows 2000 Pro SP4) for the last few years. Recently it has become slow to respond after it has been open for a while. It is fine when first opened, but soon becomes painfully slow to respond to things like opening emails. If I click on the X to close it, I get a dialogue box saying the application is not responding. If I select "End Now" it closes Outlook. I can then reopen Outlook which is ok again for a short while, before it slows down again.
I read something about problems with it interfacing with MSN Messenger, so I've disabled that on the options page of Outlook. But it is still slow. I did have the MSN search tool installed, but I've removed that and still no difference, except that when I close Oulook it leaves a partially displayed seach bar at the top of my desktop screen. It shows "Search In" and "Find Now". This disappears if I move another window over it and then away again.
I tried reparing the installation of Outlook, but this did not help.

Any suggestions on what to try next?

tawnyowls

A few years?? How big is your file by now? I archive mine once a year and start up a new one. Try doing a search for .pst - if it's over 500 MB then it's definitely too big; in fact, in a previous employment, mine got up to round about 1Gb and seized up completely! To start up a new one, just name the present .pst file something else, move it to another folder, restart Outlook and it should start up a new .pst file for you. If it doesn't, go to File -> New and create and Outlook Data file. If you then open the other one while in Outlook (File -> Open -> Outlook Data File and browse through folders till you find it), it'll open as a second set of personal folders, and you can drag anything you really need out of it and into the new one. Any other ones just leave in the old one, close it down in Outlook, and it'll still be accessible whenever you need it.

Need_More_Money_2

I tend to delete most of the emails I receive, so the .pst files are not too big.
I have more than one .pst file because I use IMAP and POP3. The biggest file is the POP3 file, but this is only 16Mb. I have two IMAP accounts and each seems to have two .pst files associated with it. For each there is one file that is 48kb and one that is 5Mb and 3Mb respectively.
I don't think file size is the problem

tawnyowls

Mm. No, doesn't sound like it. However, I vaguely remember when I had the seizing up problem mentioned above that(after we got it to a state that it could actually be opened and I'd deleted loads of stuff) the IT boys said that even when the .pst file seemed to be quite small, there was still a lot of c**p hanging round from deleted emails. Might be worth creating a new .pst file and archiving the other ones anyhow?