Microsoft Acknowledges Outlook Traditional Bug and Provides a Short-term Repair

Microsoft has acknowledged a bug in its Outlook Traditional software program, which spikes CPU utilization by 30%-50%. The issue has continued since November 2024, with a number of customers complaining of a sluggish system and an irregular improve in CPU utilization once they kind emails.

Customers have reported that disabling spell-check and graphic acceleration additionally didn’t assist. One consumer even stated that the temperatures of their i9-14900HX CPU reached 95 levels Celsius once they opened the ‘New Message’ tab.

Nevertheless, Microsoft didn’t provide a long-term repair for the issue. Solely a stopgap repair. Customers can change to the Semi-Annual Channel, the place this downside hasn’t been noticed. The difficulty seems to be particular to the Present, Month-to-month Enterprise, or Insider channels.

Right here’s how you are able to do it as a house consumer:

• Open Command Immediate (make sure you’ve chosen the ‘Run as administrator possibility’)
• Kind the next command: reg add HKLMSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftoffice16.0commonofficeupdate /v updatebranch /t REG_SZ /d SemiAnnual
• When you’ve added the registry key, choose File > Workplace Account > Replace Choices > Replace Now to change.

In case you’re operating a company, Microsoft has revealed an in depth information on how one can replace the channel utilizing Group Coverage, Workplace Deployment Instrument (ODT), Configuration Supervisor, Microsoft Intune Administrative Templates, and the admin heart.

In the meantime, the corporate has stated that the Outlook workforce is investigating the difficulty.

Why No Repair?

The issue has been round for greater than six months now, and it’s fairly odd {that a} tech behemoth like Microsoft has been sitting on it. Is the issue that advanced, or is there one thing beneath the sheets?

Nicely, it’s a recognized undeniable fact that Microsoft desires to dispose of its Outlook Traditional product and have customers shift to the brand new Outlook for Home windows. Nevertheless, the corporate has gone on report to say that it’ll provide help for Traditional till the tip of 2029. These two commitments don’t align properly, do they?

Customers received’t ‘willingly’ shift to the brand new Outlook as a result of it lacks some options supplied by the Traditional model. As an example, there are not any a number of mail profiles, shared mailboxes, customized varieties, or SharePoint calendar sync with the brand new Outlook.

Plus, many options, akin to offline help, the Notes module, and .PST help, are solely partially obtainable. So, why would customers wish to change to an inferior product?

May it’s doable that this complete ‘CPU-slowing bug’ factor is a method to push customers to the brand new product?

Nicely, these are simply speculations, and we’ll by no means attain the underside of this idea. It might be doable that Microsoft will launch a everlasting repair quickly and put these theories to relaxation. For now, we’ll have to attend for the following growth on this problem.