High CPU usage when typing a message in Outlook

Question

OS: Win 11 Pro

Office: 2016 Pro

Hi everyone,

CPU activity goes to 16-22% when typing a message in Outlook 2016 and returns to 1 % when typing stops.

Deactivating (all) add-ins and Graphic acceleration did not solve the issue.

Deactivating spell check options did not cure the problem either.

The problem seems to be specific to Win 11 and does not occur on Win 10 OS.

If anyone has any suggestion on how to solve this issue...
PDMC

***moved from Outlook / Windows / Classic Outlook for Windows / For business***

Answer 1

Dear PASCAL DMCHRETIEN

Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community

Based on your description, I understand that you are experiencing high CPU usage while typing emails in Outlook 2016.

I understand your frustration, but the issue has not been successfully resolved in Outlook 2016 even though you have troubleshot add-ons, graphics acceleration, and deactivated spell checking options, and the issue is primarily occurring on Windows 11, so I would recommend that you contact Microsoft Online Support directly, where you can communicate with them about the issue you are experiencing via chat, and ask them to remotely, if necessary!  Chat specialists will answer your questions immediately. The chat window is one-on-one and the chat specialists will answer your questions immediately and deal with them more efficiently! 

you can click on the link below to log into your personal Microsoft account and chat directly with chat support.

1. Open this link Contact Us - Microsoft Support

2. Select Office. At the bottom of the page. Select the Contact Support option.

3. Select Microsoft 365 and Office.
4. In Categories, you can select Technical Support  and confirm it.

5. Then select Chat with a support agent in a web browser.

TIPS: Please contact us during local working hours on weekdays, CHAT does not work 24 hours a day.

Wish you all the best and have a nice day!

Linda.W-MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

Answer 2

Dear Linda,

Thank you for your message.

What we can confirm is that the problem only occurs on Win 11 Pro platforms.
There is no problem when running on Win 10 Pro OS;
Strangely enough, the problem only affects Outlook ; running WORD 2K16 on Win 11 OS does not cause any issue (although WORD and OUTLOOK share the same kernel).

Does Outlook 2021 suffer from the same High CPU usage problem, when running on Win 11 ?

Thank you for your consideration.

Answer 3

Hi There,

I am seeing this exact problem as of november this year.

In VDI environments or on dedicated user devices. While composing message CPU spikes up to approx 25% and stays there until the mail is sent or closed.

Running build 18129.20158

Any ideas?

Answer 4

Hello,

I can confirm exactly the same problem as Pascal described, high CPU usage caused by Outlook during typing an e-mail.

But at my side, the problem occurs as well on Windows 11 as also on Windows 10.

We use Office from Microsoft 365, current channel (2410, now 2411). Rollbacks to 2409, 2408 and 2406 did not solve the problem, but the problem started to appear from September on, so the reason may be something different.

There already was a similar problem with high CPU load caused by Outlook from 2021-2023, when opening new attachments: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/outlook-causes-high-cpu-usage-for-2-3-minutes-each/fa903250-4bd2-4517-942c-fe77b4c6f3c3

Contacts with "customer support" from Microsoft just caused extremely much work (try this and try that, send this and send that data), but no help, because these guys only try to look for mistakes at user's side and cannot imagine that there may be a bug at Microsoft's side.

They also cannot even try to reproduce the problem theirselves, because they don't have the software at all and just pretend that you would be the only one with this problem.

So please dispense with new askings for data, please finally reproduce the problem yourselves at Microsoft and please fix this bug quicker then in 2 years this time!

Answer 5

Here is a (dumb) solution to somehow circumvent the problem: I type the mail into Notepad (Window 11 Notepad has a spellcheck) as a buffer, and then paste the resulting text into Outlook. This way the processor does not go red hot as you type into Outlook.

Another solution is to use Word 2K16 to type your message. Surprisingly Word does not exhibit this high CPU usage problem as you type.

Yet, Outlook uses Word engine in its editing mode....