Earlier this week,Microsoft confirmedreports of an issue with the Classic version ofMicrosoftOutlook, 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 ontoOutlook 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. Youcando the riskierRegistry Key editingif 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.
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Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.
