This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Periodically, Outlook stops working, and I get a message saying that it is Contacting the server for information. This usually stops my ability to work with Outlook, and it takes long periods of time to recover. Then I get a message that Outlook is "Not Responding."
Is there a way to keep this from happening?
Are there "best practices" that I should follow regarding connecting my laptop to the network, etc.?
Any suggestions would be helpful.
Thank you,
~Nicole
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Answer accepted by question author
I noticed whenever the message appeared there was an image in the email that could not be retrieved. After looking at the source code, it was clear that the location of the image file was no longer valid. The "Contacting the server for information" window is triggered when trying to pull that information from the source location and it is not readily available, eventually it times out. Fortunately in our case we were able to reach the sender to have them fix the code in their outgoing emails.
Thank you! That is the first comment/information I have received that makes sense.
My company has this same issue, the message is short, and appears randomly and is an inconvenience, this must be a MS bug as I found 3 users reporting it on different threads all around February timeframe. Microsoft is this a known bug?
Here is the message window
It occurs like the OP when I try to open certain emails. It will always occur whenever I interact with that exact email.
Yes, it is very frustrating; I also ended up using Task Manager to end the program. Check your add-ins in Outlook and disable them; this seems to help.
~Nicole
I have the same problem, only the message doesn't go away and I can't use Outlook. The only way to make it close is to use Task Manager and End Task for Outlook. This happens SEVERAL times a day. So annoying, please help!
