"There is not enough free memory to run this program" error in Outlook

  • Article
  • Applies to:
    Outlook 2010, Outlook 2013, Outlook 2016, Outlook 2019

Symptoms

When you click a folder while you're using Microsoft Outlook, you receive one of the following error messages:

Error message 1

There is not enough free memory to run this program. Quit one or more programs, and then try again.

Error message 2

Unable to display the folder. There is not enough free memory to run this program. Quit one or more programs, and then try again.

Error message 3

Cannot display the folder. There is not enough free memory to run this program. Quit one or more programs, and then try again.

You may experience this issue more frequently if you use add-ins in Outlook.

Cause

This issue occurs because there's insufficient memory to display the folder. This may be caused by any of several different reasons. One of these reasons is that customizations, such as setting a filter, were made to the folder view. Some add-ins in Outlook subscribe to many folders in some or all stores in the profile. Each MAPI subscription uses some shared memory. Therefore, large combinations of items and folders can exhaust the available memory.

Workaround

Important

Follow the steps in this section carefully. Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Before you modify it, back up the registry for restoration in case problems occur.

To work around the issue that is described in the "Symptoms" section, increase available memory. To increase the size of the memory heap, follow these steps:

  1. Exit Outlook.

  2. Select Start, select Run, type regedit, and then select OK.

  3. Locate and then select the following registry subkey:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Messaging Subsystem

  4. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then select DWORD Value.

  5. Type SharedMemMaxSize, and then press Enter.

  6. Right-click SharedMemMaxSize, and then select Modify.

  7. In the Value data box, type 300000. Use the default Base of Hexadecimal.

  8. Select OK.

  9. Locate and then select the following registry subkey:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Applications\Outlook

    Note

    You may have to create the Applications and Outlook subkeys if they don't exist.

  10. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then select DWORD Value.

  11. Type SharedMemMaxSize, and then press Enter.

  12. In the Value data box, type 300000. Use the default Base of Hexadecimal.

  13. Select OK.

  14. On the File menu, select Exit to exit Registry Editor.

Note

If setting the two registry values to 0x300000 doesn't fix the issue, you can increase the size of these values up to 0x800000.

More information

If you have a large Outlook data (.pst) file open in Outlook, you can close the .pst file or decrease the number of folders in the .pst file to fix the issue.

If you have many add-ins that are enabled in Outlook, you can disable or uninstall them to determine whether doing this fixes the issue.

For more information, see the following Knowledge Base article:

269794 MAPI Advise() call returns 0x8007000E (E_OUTOFMEMORY)