Why does Outlook launch IE in the background?

Michael - as I explained, Outlook starts up IE preemptively on start up so it can be ready to handle office.js based add-ins. You can kill the processes, but as soon as Outlook needs them, it will start them up again. The only detrimental effect will be that the first add-in you load may take longer to start up than it would have otherwise.

Outlook uses IE to handle HTML rendering and javascript processing for these add-ins. This has nothing to do with your choice of browser.

>When will Microsoft listen to users and do something helpful?

I believe that's what's happening here. We have identified an issue where the IE processes won't be shut down when Outlook is closed. I just assigned that bug to a developer who has the repro, so we should have a fix for that soon.

A great many users of Outlook 2016, etc are plagued by there being 2 instances of iexplore started, one being the 64-bit vsersion. Starting Outlook in safe made makes not the slightest difference. That was reported at least 2 years ago and still Microsft has not fixed it and no one on any of the relevant forums has a solution.

Outlook does not need to have IE running at all. In my case I open Task Manager and 'kill' both instances of IE with no detrimental effect on Outlook. I use other browsers as I dislike IE and, as I'm using Windows 8.1, I fortunately do not have Edge to contend with.

When will Microsoft listen to users and do something helpful?

Hi - We have been facing the same problem which Evan highlighted. we have updated the Office 365 , but still issue remain same , please help us to solve this problem as early as possible.