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Earlier this week, Microsoft has confirmed reports an issue with the classic version of Microsoft Outlook, in which users who open more than 60 emails simultaneously experience crashes. This may seem like a fringe use case, but for users who need to go through large volumes of mail on a regular or semi-regular basis, having such an arbitrary limit imposed on them Outlook Classic (especially when the system specs should be able to handle 60+ emails just fine) remains a problem.

The two error messages mentioned by Microsoft are:

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

“Low on memory or system resources. Close some windows or programs and try again.”

Although the error message implies that system resources are overextended, Microsoft revealed in its blog post that the crux of the problem can be narrowed down to a Windows registry setting, USERProcessHandleQuota. The default is “10,000” Decimal, and setting it to “18,000” Decimal should, in theory, allow the system to use more system resources – but this fix is ​​also noted as potentially causing deeper instability of the system and “additional pressure on the system”. operating system”.

So, in the meantime, Microsoft recommends users to avoid opening so many emails at once or wait for the Outlook team to resolve the issue. You can do the riskiest Changing the registry key please, but we only advise doing this if you are sure your system can handle the additional cost that changing USERProcessHandleQuota may incur.

Overall, this story is a pretty standard bug reporting affair, but fans of Microsoft and its software might not be happy to see issues like this still emerging in software that should have been fixed by now long time due to instability, like Outlook Classic. Hopefully Microsoft’s Outlook team fixes this issue sooner rather than later, because a user’s actual system specs should be all that limits them on PC – not bugs in the application coding.