Mountain Lion OSX slow response after upgrade from Lion

Thanks - Followed your instructions. The Outlook boots up very fast now. However, every few minutes, the cursor turns into a spinning disk and Outlook freezes. Activity Monitor shows Outlook using 75% of CPU followed by "not responding" during this period. Outlook goes back to normal after a minute or so. The problem repeats every few minutes. This problem showed up only after upgrading to Mountain Lion. Any recommendations?

Par2 -

No clue here, unless it's trying to check for mail at that interval ...and there's something wrong with an email account setting, etc. Which is possible - I've read of folks having problems in Apple Mail due to ML re-ordering email accounts, making the wrong account default, etc.

You were correct. The Outlook had two email accounts, an "Exchange" email account and a "me.com" account which has now been transferred to iCloud. It looks like the problem was with the "me.com" account since Apple's Mail program on my laptop experienced the same problem (although not as bad). I killed both Outlook accounts and started by reinstalling the "exchange" email account. There are no more delays. Now I need to re-install the me.com account correctly on both machines.

Greetings. I found this thread after experiencing the same problems with Outlook 2011. I followed the directions for the fix to a "T", rebooted my laptop and Outloook did launch faster than previously--but still went through "rebuilding identities" process. Closing and reopening Outlook after that initial launch displayed impressive speed (1 or 2 seconds--just about as fast as Mac Mail) during testing while the laptop was still on and not having done a full reboot. But upon rebooting the whole computer again, I was disappointed to see the "rebuilding identities" message and very long opening times (A couple mintues, at least) for Outlook following a full restart. Has anyone else still been experiencing this glitch?

Thanks!

To clarify--after the long initial launch time for Outlook, it continues to operate very quickly with no lag. Subsequent relaunches while the computer is still on are blazingly fast. Only after the computer is completely restarted does that slow relaunch of the app occur.

That worked for me too. Don't forget to re-index the spotlite after rebuliding outlook DB to be able to search your emails again.

Open terminal and issue the following commands:

sudo mdutil -E /

sudo mdutil -i on /

Thanks! Solved it.

Actually, I spoke too soon. It's back where I started, if not worse. I'll try the process again unless there are other suggestions. Many thanks.

FYI, I had similar issues with Entourage 2008 following an upgrade fron Snow Leopard - extremely slow everything. After suffering through a week with Apple Mail (I despise Outlook), I found deleting the preferences files did the trick after reading this thread. Now, everything is back normal performance with Entourage.

I also applied everything - don't really notice any difference sadly enough. I removed the (user) > Library > Preferences > Microsoft files (also had something of identity 2008 in there!) and rebuild the database as said. Removed the 'backed up database'. But no speed increase. A little bit when outlook is fully loaded, but nothing consistent.

Restarted a couple of times - rebuild database only once (because that took a long time) - did notice a smaller database file after the rebuild.

Any suggestions?

Thanks for posting this. I tried this fix today and it helped!

Terry:

Tried your solution to the re-build of Outlook 2011 in Mountain Lion. Unfortunately, it still takes 75 - 90 seconds for the initial load after a system re-boot. In fact, after the initial loading of Outlook, then a shutdown and re-opening, it still takes about the same amount of time, or longer to load up - stalling in the "setting up identity" yellow window. As I'm writing thi, it took a full 2 minutes to load up. Once loaded, functionality is fine. I'm running an Early 2012 MacBook Pro, 2.2 GHz i7 processor with 4GB of RAM.

I've re-built the database numerous times, as well as defragmenting the drive.

Any more thoughts? It had been running properly in Lion, loading in 10 - 15 seconds.

Thanks.

GeneonMAC

GeneonMAC -

This issue is that a Microsoft Office update - that was supposed to prepare Office for Mountain Lion - failed for some users. The update was supposed to change where some Office preference files were kept, and move the old files. For some of us, likely you, it left files were there were to be none. The problem did not manifest itself until Mountain Lion was installed.

The issue is that certain files are in the wrong place, not that a re-build fixes things - in fact, it will not. Running a re-build is just routine maintenance after getting the files in the correct place.

Please go back and re-read the thread. You are missing the part about files being in the wrong place and how to move/change them. That is the fix, not the re-build.

It does sound as though you have the same problem the rest of us had. Read carefully and I think you will see the answer to your problems.

Terry:

Thanks for responding. Sorry I didn't elaborate.

I moved the folder your specified - Outlook 2011 in <user>/library/preferences/microsoft.

The only thing that did not happen completely according to your instructions was that when I attemted to do the first re-build (after moving the folder) I didn't hold down the option key long enough and it opened Outlook.

I then closed it and re-booted and did the database re-build.

Unfortunately, I'm still experiencing the 70-120 second delay in opening Outlook - principally sticking at the yellow panel indicating "setting up identity".

Are there other files/folders that need to be moved?

I found the other Outlook 2011 folder you noted and did not disturb it.

Any other thoughts on what to do next?

Apprecaite your help.

GeneonMAC -

Hmmm... While it certainly sounds as though you have the same issue that those of us on this thread have, maybe it's something else. At this point, I'd suggest you head over to the Microsoft Office for Mac discussions and see what those folks have for ideas. Personally, I'm not sure what else to tell you.

I would be interested in what you eventually find as the culprit, though. Please do post back when you do.