Large e-mail messages download slowly, or Outlook stops responding

When you connect to your Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 computer or to your Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server computer by using Microsoft Outlook 2000 or by using Outlook 2002, a large e-mail message may download very slowly or Outlook may stop responding.

This problem may occur if the following conditions are true:

• Outlook is configured to deliver e-mail to a local personal folder (.pst) file.
• Many Outlook clients that are configured to deliver e-mail to a local .pst file connect to your server and try to download e-mail at the same time.

To work around this problem, configure Outlook to deliver e-mail to your mailbox instead of to the .pst file.

Configure Outlook 2002

1. On the Tools menu in Outlook, click E-mail Accounts.
2. Click View or change existing e-mail accounts, and then click Next.
3. In the Deliver new mail to the following location list, click Mailbox - User_Name.
4. Click Finish.
5. Quit Outlook, and then restart Outlook.

Configure Outlook 2000

1. On the Tools menu in Outlook, click Services.
2. In the Services dialog box, click the Delivery tab.
3. In the Deliver new mail to the following location list, click Mailbox - User_Name.
4. Click OK.
5. Quit Outlook, and then restart Outlook.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Microsoft Outlook 2000 and in Microsoft Outlook 2002 when they are connected to when connecting to Exchange 2000 Server or to Exchange Server 2003.

This problem has been resolved in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, but only for Outlook 2003. There are three registry keys for Exchange Server 2003 that you can configure to limit the number of clients that can synchronize at the same time. These registry keys work only with Outlook 2003 clients. For additional information about this feature, see the Reference section.

For additional information about Outlook client synchronization, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: