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How to find and disable Outlook 2003 Add-ins and plugins

Disabling unnecessary plugins is a great way to make your Outlook start faster, run more reliably, take less memory. In Outlook 2003 there are three places to look for installed addins and to disable them.

1. COM Add-ins

To view and disable COM Add-ins in Outlook 2003, navigate to:
“Tools->Other->Advanced Options->COM Add-ins…” and uncheck the Add-ins you do not need.

2. Add-in Manager

Navigate to “Tools->Options->Other->Advanced Options->Add-ins Manager…” and uncheck the Add-ins you do not need.

3. Registry Add-ins

In Outlook 2003, some Add-ins are not shown in the UI. You have to look for them in the registry.

  1. Run regedit*.
  2. Navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ Outlook\Addins”.
  3. Look at all subkeys of Addins. Those are Add-ins you have installed. To disable a particular Add-in, set its “LoadBehavior” key to 2.

* – as always be very careful while performing registry modifications.

Do not forget to restart Outlook after making these changes.

 

See more tips on improving Outlook performance and stability.

 

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Workaround for “The connected state of Office Add-ins registered in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE cannot be changed”

If you are trying to disable an Outlook 2007 add-in, you might see this message “The connected state of Office Add-ins registered in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE cannot be changed”. Some users try to run Outlook as Administrator to work around this issue. We do not recommend doing so. Instead, you can disable this Add-in by modifying the registry.

  1. Run regedit*.
  2. Navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ Outlook\Addins”.
    (If you are running a 64-bit verion of Windows, you may also need to look in “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\ Office\Outlook\Addins”).
  3. Look at all subkeys of Addins. Those are Add-ins you have installed. To disable a particular Add-in, set its “LoadBehavior” key to 2.

* – as always be very careful while performing registry modifications.

Do not forget to restart Outlook after making these changes.