Why does Outlook launch IE in the background?

At my work we are experiencing a issue on our windows 7 machines the 2 Iexplorer.exe processes over time will cause performance degradation to the point a webex will take 5 minutes to open, Once we go in and end all Iexplorer.exe process including the outlook ones everything works normally and is back up to speed, 

This only happens on windows 7 machines, our windows 10 boxes open outlook and its 2 iexplorer.exe process just fine with no issues over time. 

We have had the case open with microsoft for 3 weeks at this point still no luck on the root cause or a fix other then we know its tied to the iexplorer.exe processes as our users have found out and now they just end them to get things working again which in turn makes it hard to get users to work with.... sigh 

I would be ok with a opt in to a version of office / outlook that does not preheat IE since everything was fine up until that change the few second addin wait time is much better then browser and webex performance degrading to a crawl.

over 2 years this has been being called out in way or another maybe preheating IE isnt the best way to make up for slow add-in performance....

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.

I put together a permanent solutions to this issue but it seems to me like an excessive work around.

I tagged myself to this ticket hoping for either an update from Microsoft or a solutions from another user.

Summary:

This solutions involves a PowerShell script + Task Scheduler + replacing shortcut with modified shortcut

Yea, I know, it's kinda of an ugly solution.

 First step is to make a PowerShell script that will close any IE process that open up within a few seconds AFTER Outlook starts. This will prevent closing any legitimate IE processes that may have been running prior to opening Outlook. (LOL I couldn't say this line out loud with a straight face).

Here is my script

function KillIE()

{

& "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\OUTLOOK.EXE";

Start-Sleep -s 6;

$outlookStart = Get-Process outlook -IncludeUserName | where UserName -match $env:userName;

Get-Process iexplore -IncludeUserName | where-Object starttime -gt $outlookStart.starttime | where UserName -match $env:userName | stop-process;

}

Once you save the script then you have to create a Task Scheduler that will trigger when clicked.

Then when you are done, you have to make a custom shortcut that will run this task when clicked

Afterwards you can change the icon for the shortcut to make it look like an Outlook icon so that no one that uses it realizes that it is not the orginal shortcut.

This is messy but it gets the job done...

Hello Alison,

We are on current channel, but the update to 1704 8067.2070 does not appear.  When I open Outlook and check for updates, Outlook says that the latest version is installed.  Please see the screenshots below.

Safe mode does not change the behavior.  Outlook still launches iexplore.exe in the background when it is opened in Safe mode.  I cannot provide screenshots of the IE windows, because they open silently in the background.  

Thank you,

Evan

Hello Evan,

Could you please have a check on the Outlook again? If you are under the current channel, try updating to the latest version. If the issue still occurs, please kindly share some snapshots of that two IE windows. 

Furthermore, to isolate the issue, I suggest you open Outlook in safe mode to see if there is any improvement.

Step:

Hold the Windows key and press R, then type outlook.exe /safe in the Open field and click OK.

Best Regards,

Alison