Remove unwanted add-ins from Outlook.

These are default add-ins which come with Outlook and can be disabled via;
File-> Options-> Add-ins

When you disable them there, they will not automatically re-enable themselves. Removing their registration from the Registry will indeed re-enable them automatically at some point unless you set their LoadBehavior to 0.

Note that when using an Exchange account, you'll need to enable the Microsoft Exchange Add-in for some functionality.

Also note that these add-ins are not likely to be the root cause of any instability or slowdowns of Outlook.

I tried disabling them several times but they keep getting enabled. Also, when starting Outlook, I see 7 add-ins getting loaded whereas I've 8 add-ins including the 4 unwanted add-ins. It means, Outlook will take longer to start. Why the 8th one doesn't load every time I start Outlook? Why Microsoft is not giving control to users on what they what & what they don't want? I'm a single user. I won't need any exchange facility in my lifetime. Same with social connector. I'm also not going to use data exchange with Access. I'm never going to write any VBA code for Outlook. If ever I need them, I can download them from Out Outlook library (which I'm sure Microsoft would be more than happy to provide FOC) & install them. I should have this much control to remove these unwanted add-ins. Irrespective of their size, they are eating out of my limited resources, including battery, data, etc.

Hello Robert,

Greetings! 😀💐

Sorry, I don't agree. Microsoft does not give complete control. Had it been so, I should have the ability to remove all the unwanted add-ins completely from my PC. In fact, one of the add-ins is not removable at all as I get an error message that to remove this add-in, the corresponding component of Office has to be removed first. It was better earlier when we used to install MS Office from a CD pack where we could opt for what we want to install & what we don't want.

Even a person from the support team took remote access to the PC & tried removing them but failed. It was quite unfortunate that instead of giving his full effort, he abruptly closed the call. He left it to the community to resolve it. I have a paid subscription to Microsoft 365 but I'm being treated like a free customer.

Coming to your point of removing registry entries. I removed them as a last resort as even after clicking on the Remove button & restarting outlook, they reappear. It's causing delayed starting of Outlook & probably because of it sometimes, a few wanted add-ins don't load properly. Not only these unwanted add-ins load they get enabled also.

So hoping to get a solution soon. As a second thought just now, I'll approach the Microsoft support team again. Hopefully, I'll get a more professional engineer, who just in case is not able to resolve himself will escalate it to tier 2 or a higher team.

Warm regards,

Rahul Dev

Actually removing them isn't possible no, but we are talking about MB here and not GB. Also, had they built-in this functionality without an add-in, we wouldn't be having this conversation either. With that it is not much different as wanting to remove the Mail Merge functionality from Outlook and Word because you might not use it.

Disabling them is enough to keep them quiet and they will not use up any other resources then. Also, it is not like these add-ins are continuously using up CPU cycles and use copieus amount of RAM when they are loaded either; They are only there to provide the functionality when requested just like the Mail Merge functionality.

If you are trying to solve slowdowns in Outlook, I can assure you that these add-ins are not the root cause of your issues but if you know you don't need their functionality, you are free to disable them.

At this point, I would recommend doing a repair on your Office installation to undo any manual file and/or Registry removal. After that, disabling them from within Outlook should work reliably. As you've already found out where to look in the Registry for these add-in registrations, you should see that their LoadBehavior gets set to 0. If not, you can safely do so from within the Registry yourself to prevent them from loading.

These are default add-ins which come with Outlook and can be disabled via;
File-> Options-> Add-ins

When you disable them there, they will not automatically re-enable themselves. Removing their registration from the Registry will indeed re-enable them automatically at some point unless you set their LoadBehavior to 0.

Note that when using an Exchange account, you'll need to enable the Microsoft Exchange Add-in for some functionality.

Also note that these add-ins are not likely to be the root cause of any instability or slowdowns of Outlook.

Why Microsoft is not giving control to users on what they what & what they don't want?

Microsoft does give this control to you but apparently it is not working for you for whatever reason. This may have been caused by removing the Registry entries completely, but it is hard to say at this point.

When you disable the add-ins from within Outlook and then restart Outlook, do they remain disabled then or are they directly enabled again?