If you have a large (1-2 GB or larger) mailbox in Outlook 2007, you have undoubtedly noticed that it can take a long time to start up in the morning. Like startup-Outlook-then-go-get-a-cup-of-coffee long. (There is a reason I am not in Product Marketing).

You may have also noticed long shutdown times, an messages about “The data file ‘<file name>’ was not closed properly.  This file is being checked for problems”.

If, so, then I have AWESOME news.  The Outlook team has fixed all of these problems for Service Pack 2 (coming out in the next few months…), and even better, has backported these fixes into the February Cumulative Update for Outlook 2007, which is available now.

I cannot emphasize this enough… the difference is NIGHT-AND-DAY.  Outlook starts up and shuts down instantly.  This update strongly gets the Sean Seal Of Approval.

Outlook Team Announcement

February Cumulative Update Download Page

February Cumulative Update Whitepaper (lots of technical detail about the changes)

One thing to note… in order for the magic to take place, Outlook has to reprocess your data files the first time you open Outlook after installing the update.  This can take a few minutes, after which Outlook switches into uber-snappy mode.

Within SharePoint, you can create new Site Collections or Sub Sites, which can look exactly the same to the end user, but which have some significant differences to the administrator.  I won’t cover the differences here, but you can read more here or here.

One drawback to Site Collections is the fact that they do not maintain common navigation settings with parent site collections within the portal.  This can lead to a jarring experience for the end user who clicks on a link, appears to just go down a level within the site hierarchy (looking at the URL), but all of a sudden has no link back to where he or she just was.

Fortunately, there is a feature to give them a path back :)  At the root of the new Site Collection, click on Site Actions –> Site Settings –> Modify All Site Settings.

Under the Site Collection Administration column, click on Portal site connection

On the resulting page, click on “Connect to portal site”, enter an address and name for your portal, and hit “OK”.

Now, at the top-left of all pages in that Site Collection, you have a breadcrumb that will take them back to the parent portal, restoring sanity to the end-user experience.