Deletion of +70 stubs in Outlook causes client to hang...

[Lennnnny]

When a client “cleans out” a large amount of stubs (+50) it causes Outlook to hang. Or the process takes over 6 minutes giving the impression of the deletion process failure. Is there a baseline or an explanation that I could reference when I get these types of errors?  There is an expectation it should be as fast and a regulars Exchange message...

EV for Exchange ver 8.05

EV Outlook client 9.02

Exchange server 2003

Outlook 2007

[JesusWept3]

Are you telling it to delete the archived item as well or just the shortcuts only? If its shortcut only then it's a Microsoft issue If its shortcut and archived item then it has to make a separate URL request for each deletion which will move the item to dumpster (if enabled) and then delete the index If dumpster isn't enabled then it may take a little longer due to the fact it has to remove it from storage which can depend on how fast storage is etc I guess the question is, how long is long? And if you open up outlook or OWA after it hangs, do you see the items disappear and it's just taking time for outlook to pop back up? Also do you use vault cache and virtual vault and have them indexed by WDS? I know there were some performance improvements some time ago about mass deletions and outlook responsiveness but I can't remember if that was purely client side or if part was server side as well and which versions it affected

[Rob_Wilcox1]

There is a known issue in this area..

First some questions.

Is Outlook in online or cached mode?

Is it at the start of an Outlook session, or after it's been in use for a while?

[Lennnnny]

Outlook is online we don't have cache mode enabled.

Looks like it can happen at any time. with the mass delete it will hang for 5 or 6 minutes. For example: If i choose to delete 500 archived messages Outlook will hang for almost 10 minutes then come back. But, only 200 messages will be deleted...Then I can do it again....

[Rob_Wilcox1 · Accepted solution]

Okay, this is a known issue.

There are a couple of things at play.  FIrstly when the delete like this happens each item is processed individually, and is opened from Exchange, in order to do the delete operation, and also deleted from the archive.  These operations unfortunately take a small amount of time - which builds up the more items you've got.  Secondly when you select a large number of items (eg 500) the Outlook Add-in scans those items to check which are archived items, and which aren't.  Thirdly when you are in online Outlook mode, you are 'more' affected by a MAPI open-object limit, and that's the reason why only a percentage of the 500 you selected are actually deleted.

Cached mode Outlook fairs slightly better, but it still takes quite some time to process the items.

Hope that helps, and makes sense.