Why does Outlook launch IE in the background?

Anonymous
2017-05-09T14:01:44+00:00

Hello,

We are using Office 365 ProPlus on Windows 10 Pro.  Opening Outlook (16.0.7927.1020) will launch two background processes of IE (iexplore.exe).  Why does Outlook open IE?  

This behavior does not happen in earlier versions of Office 365 ProPlus, such as 16.0.6001.1041.  It appears that an update for Office 365 ProPlus is causing Outlook to open IE in the background.

Thank you,

Evan

Outlook | Windows | Classic Outlook for Windows | For home

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-05-15T14:33:48+00:00

    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.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-07-23T17:18:43+00:00

    The fix for this issue (orphaned IE processes starting when Protected mode has been disabled) was checked in to build 16.0.10211.20004. Version 1806 is build 16.0.10288.XXXXX, so anyone running Monthly Channel, which is on 1806, should see improved behavior here.

    You can see current build #s here:

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/update-history-office365-proplus-by-date?redirectSourcePath=%252fen-us%252farticle%252fae942449-1fca-4484-898b-a933ea23def7

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-08-02T02:36:49+00:00

    Stephen, it is nice to see that you are working on this one.

    I am seeing the performance issues resulting from these 2 IE processes. They constantly use a minimum of 10% CPU and spike up from there. Real life impact is noticeable slower PC performance and higher drain when running on batteries. I have reset IE so it has no addins running.

    Now that you have fixed up the protected mode issues can you look to this one?

    In the meantime I will continue to kill them when I notice them.

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