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,

yes, for sure you can prepare and type your e-mails in other programs and just finally and quickly copy the content to Outlook so that Outlook only causes high CPU load for a short time, but that's not really the way how it should be.

I guess Microsoft will not fix this for a very long time again, because most users are not aware of the very high, totally unnecessary CPU usage caused by Outlook during typing e-mails. And that users who are aware in most cases won't report the problem to anyone. The rate of complaints unfortunately will be extremely small in this case, although the effect of the bug is huge (the total energy consumption caused by just this stupid bug and Microsoft ignoring this will be tremendous).

Here are already 5 users who found this posting (what's not so easy) and who confirmed to have the same problem (what not everybody will do). So I'm sure that nearly all = many millions of users will be concerned.

Answer 2

Hi Dark Rider,

Totally agree; with your comments.
My experience of Microsoft technical support is that when confirmed the problem is supposed to be "escalated" to the next level of technician. Then, be prepared to wait for weeks, or months.
Hence why I asked Linda (above) whether the problem affects later versions of Office Pro or not ( it might be easier to buy a newer version of Office, than tinkering for weeks). Unfortunately, this question remained unanswered. Would be interesting to know if later versions of Office are affected, too.

Note: In your previous correspondence, you mentioned that the problem also affects Win 10. I have another machine running on Win 10 Pro, where Office 2K16 Pro is installed, but could not reproduce the problem on this machine. Strange.

Answer 3

Dear Pascal,

I use Microsoft 365 with current channel. That's Office with at least monthly updates, so you always get the latest version (as soon as they are officially released, so no previews): https://learn.microsoft.com/de-de/officeupdates/update-history-microsoft365-apps-by-date?redirectSourcePath=%252fen-us%252farticle%252fae942449-1fca-4484-898b-a933ea23def7

So my Outlook is version 2411, Build 18227.20046. It also has this bug. So if you update your Office, it will most probably not solve this problem, unfortunately.

Answer 4

Dear Dark Rider,
Thank you for this valuable info. You have a good point, here.
But then, why aren't more people complaining about the problem ?
I just can't make it. It is no longer some lunatic like me still using Office 2K16, but the whole 365 community, right ?
Besides, the problem is less than two month old; It was introduced by an update ; so it should not be that difficult for Microsoft to trace it and solve it.
Someone must have fallen asleep behind the wheel. What is Microsoft doing appart sticking their head in the sand ?

Answer 5

Dear Pascal,

the problem is often with customer service departments, that they do not take problems seriously if not at least hundreds of users complain. The point with this bug is that Outlook does not crash, what everybody would notice, but that "just" the CPU is running hot again and again. Many PCs have fans that run very often or permanently also without this bug, so that users hear no big difference. And they will also not check it in task manager. Moreover, the misbehavior does not slow down Outlook so much that you feel it because current CPUs are still powerful enough to enable fluent working even with one CPU core on 100% load. So a friend of mine has the same bug using Windows 11, but she wouldn't have noticed it if I didn't ask her. That's why only a few people like us will notice it, who have silent PCs whose fans normally do not run whily typing e-mails, but now they do.

As I mentioned, I tried some rollbacks to former versions of Office/Outlook (2409, 2408 and 2406), but that didn't help. So I suppose that something else has changed 2 months ago, maybe Windows Defender or something else within Windows, what makes Outlook cause this trouble now. But that's just a supposition.