UPDATE: October 8, 2008
If you are using Outlook 2003, 2007 you would have experienced the Desktop Mail Alert that comes up when a new email is received. It typically shows up in the right bottom above the system tray.
While it is very useful to get a glimpse of the content as well as decide on whether to read the email or not, it can take up memory resources and occasionally make Outlook hang, particularly if you are parallelly running memory intesive applications such as Visual Studio, a few Excel files etc.,. I wanted to get rid of the Desktop Alert thing for obvious reasons and found it little tricky to figure out.
It is in Tools - Options - Preferences - Email Options - Advanced E-mail options - Display a New Mail Desktop Alert (default Inbox only). Uncheck it if you wish to disable the Desktop Alert.
Of course, you can also turn it off by clicking on the options when the actual Alert comes up and say Disable Desktop Alert
You can also turn if off by right clicking on the Outlook Icon in the System Tray and un-select Show New Mail Desktop Alert. Thanks to "ET" for the useful comment, reminding one more option.
And it is well documented in http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA100986701033.aspx but my idea of this post it to share the experience. After removing it, relatively the performance has been good.
Cheers !!!
posted @ Tuesday, October 07, 2008 5:07 PM