Outlook 2016 CPU usage running continuously at around 100%

Anonymous
2015-07-29T05:38:02+00:00

I recently purchased a Office 365 Business plan, and have installed the desktop Office 2016 apps. I am experiencing continuous high CPU utilization, causing the fan in my MacBook to run much of the time. Activity Monitor shows that Outlook is the culprit.

I have Outlook 15.11.2 and OS X 10.10.  I have one Exchange 2010 (SP2) accounts and two IMAP accounts. All are showing folders up to date, and mail is being sent & received normally.

I haven't noticed any issues with the other Office 2016 applications.

I have already tried creating a new identity and setting up accounts again from there (rather than importing from OUtlook 2011 which I did at first installation), but it did not help.

I have also installed the suite on my iMac, and experience the same issue there, so it is not specific to my laptop.

There is an earlier thread on this issue, started in 2014 and with posts up to mid July this year, with not a single response from MSFT. It is clear there is a bug here, as it stands I am going to have to abandon Outlook 2016 and revert to 2011, so if it can't be fixed I'd like a refund.

Outlook | MacOS | Legacy Outlook for Mac | For business

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Anonymous
2017-03-14T12:50:52+00:00

I tried every option listed in this thread - to no avail.

What worked for me was to turn off Dictation:  (System Preferences\Accessibility\Dictation) 

As soon as I did that, the CPU use returned to normal instantly.

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-12-20T12:56:47+00:00

    Yes, that worked. I had some 750 mails flagged, and after clearing them my CPU usage went from 150-200% to 0.5%. Yay! But seriously, why can't Microsoft get this fixed?

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-12-18T15:48:53+00:00

    Ok, so I've fixed this.

    Removed Office365 from the Mac (3 of them in the house, all exhibiting the same thing), deleted the related Office folders in library/Group Containers

    Downloaded the current release version of Office365 from my portal, installed. Outlook now sits at between 0.0 or 0.7% of CPU even with all my accounts enabled.

    Turned of Fast Access to Beta updates or whatever it says in the Update tool. Outlook has now been running for 2 hours and I using the same as above.

    Fixed!! DO NOT USE pre release updates!

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-12-18T11:57:42+00:00

    Still doing it, 

    Tried every suggestion, yet still...

    Not sure why MS is taking so long to fix this as it has been going on for 2 yrs. Why don't they concentrate on stuff like this instead of new features, features are no use unless you can actually use the program.

    I'm running this on a new MBP 13.3 with Touch bar, i5 2.9, 8GB Ram

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-12-13T15:46:08+00:00

    x2: Clearing all the Follow UP flags also stopped my Outlook high 90-120% CPU utilization.

    As soon as I cleared them Outlook spiked to >200% for a couple of minutes while it processed the updates, and it's dropped down to a lackluster <1%.  Nice!

    Great find RobertLed. Thanks!

    Running: Outlook for Mac 2016 - Ver. 15.28.1

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