Very slow typing, HTML, O2003, XPP...

[Duncan McC]

Hi,

I think I've fixed a user's problem, but don't know if my advice is
best/good

He runs Outlook 2003 on an XP Pro machine, and tells me it's fully up-
to-date with patches.

Now my advice doesn't apply to O2007 (as I've looked and things are
different).

I have *heard* that some security update(s) issued about Oct last year
(?) can or may cause this problem.

The problem is thus:
The user creates a new email. They use HTML as the format. The user
experiences very very slow typing... typing is way ahead of what they
are seeing. And of course, they find this very frustrating and
difficult to use.

I have encountered this problem before a couple years back maybe. I
looked up what I'd done to solve this (also on O2003) and found that if
you change the: Tools, Options, Security (tab), Security Zone from
'Restricted sites' to 'Internet' - it fixed the problem.

I have advised *this* user to do the same.

I have also asked them to get back to me and let me know how they get
on, and I've also found some other guff that I've asked them to try if
they have no joy with the above, namely:
1. Disable MSN/Outlook link
2. Remove an MS security update OR use MS Word as the Outlook editor
3. Remove some Outlook files (Outlook will rebuild them) ELSE IF (that
doesn't work), create a new Outlook profile (and pull your old PST
(data) file in) ELSE IF (that doesn't work), disable Outlook addins

And I have supplied details on each of those steps - won't go into 'em
here.

My question is, is it wise to change the security zone setting as I have
advised? What could it allow (in terms of malicous content or
activity)?

(PS: I somewhat expected to see many posts about this problem here on
this NG, but am surprised to not find any - and my newsreader is
currently holding 6093 posts from this group! - otherwise I'd not post).

 

[Roady [MVP]]

No, that is bad advise. The user probably has a very long list of safe and
blocked websites configured in his/her Internet Security zones. There are
some "security" suites that do this. Empty those zones and the speed of
typing will return. The things is that when you work in a zone with a lot of
blocked/approved sites, you'll slow down operations within that zone and
each character that you type will be checked within that zone and thus load
the list. In addition, you do not want Outlook to operate in the open
Internet Zone.

The issue goes away when you set Word as the email editor as you then go out
of the Outlook Editor which is based on Internet Explorer components.
Outlook 2007 doesn't have this issue because it only has an editor that is
based on Word 2007 components.

 

[Duncan McC]

Many thanks for your quick and explanitory reply Robert.

I will get the user to check the Zones and see what they've got in
there, and find out if they run a security suite that may have filled up
the zone with guff.

I hope the above works, and I don't want to suggest the user uses Word
and the editor - it's horrible IMO, and I think they will find it quite
slow too (certainly for the "first" email anyway) - their computer is a
few years old and runs a bit slow.

 

[Duncan McC]

OK, reply # 2 Robert ...

I've just had a look at *my* restricted sites in Internet Options - and
there's a *heap* of them.

So um... what is the *default* ? Nothing? (ie what does IE put in by
itself?)

 

[Roady [MVP]]

You're welcome!

Having Word as the email editor is a bit too much for most emails indeed and
then the slow down in earlier versions of Outlook can be annoying. The
redesign in Outlook 2007 is a nice compromise between the previous 2 editors
and loads without the delay which you had in previous versions of Outlook.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Nothing in there is the default ;-)