Keeping Outlook Running for Long Periods of Time

If you keep Outlook running for long stretches at a time, like say, a week or a month or longer, then you know that this can be difficult because of power outages, updates to the operating system, etc. In addition, sometimes add-ins present a problem in that if they are not carefully managing their memory, they will eventually cause Outlook to crash. With that in mind, this month we made a correction to the underlying engine that affects all our Outlook add-ins that monitor folders, including in particular Auto Print, Attachment Save and Save As PDF. Previously, when leaving Outlook running for longer than a few days (or even within 24 hours in one case) then Outlook would crash. The cause was tracked down to the engine, where it failed to release critical memory that it was taking up. It’s always exciting to find deep underlying bugs that, once fixed, effect all the add-ins that process incoming mail.
The new engine versions (which can be viewed if you have the add-in installed by clicking on the About button of the Configuration window – it’s listed on the left hand side) are 4.1.5160.29599 (for Outlook 2010 and below) and 5.0.5160.21999 (for Outlook 2013).