Outlook users beware — Classic Outlook is currently crashing when you open more than 60 emails at once

Earlier this week, Microsoft confirmed reports of an issue with the Classic version of Microsoft Outlook, wherein users who open more than 60 emails simultaneously are being faced with crashes. This may sound like a fringe use case, but for users who need to comb through large volumes of mail on a regular or semi-regular basis, having such an arbitrary limit forced onto Outlook Classic (especially when system specifications should be able to handle 60+ emails just fine) is still a problem.

The two error messages Microsoft mentions are:

“Sorry, we’re having trouble opening this item. This could be temporary, but if you see it again you might want to restart Outlook. Out of memory or system resources. Close some windows or programs and try again.”

“Out of memory or system resources. Close some windows or programs and try again”.

While the error message implies that system resources are being taxed too hard, Microsoft revealed in its blog post that the crux of the issue can be narrowed down to a Windows Registry setting, USERProcessHandleQuota. The default value is “10000” Decimal, and setting it to “18000” Decimal should, in theory, allow the system to use up more system resources — but this fix is also noted as potentially causing deeper system instability and “additional strain on the operating system”.

So, in the interim, Microsoft is recommending that users either avoid opening that many emails at once or wait for the Outlook team to fix the issue. You can do the riskier Registry Key editing if you so please, but we would only advise doing so if you’re confident that your system can handle the additional toll that changing USERProcessHandleQuota may incur.

Overall, this story is a fairly standard bug reporting affair, but fans of Microsoft and its software may not be happy to see issues like this still emerging in software that should have been long-ironed out of instability, such as Outlook Classic. Hopefully Microsoft’s Outlook team will fix this issue sooner rather than later, since a user’s actual system specifications should be all that limits them on PC — not bugs in application coding.