Share via

Outlook freezing when attaching a file using the Attach File button on the ribbon

Grove, Michael 31 Reputation points
2025-07-28T09:58:16.21+00:00

One of my colleagues had an issue where Outlook would hang when clicking on the Attach file icon either in Calendar or new message, I tried a new profile, disabled all of the add-ins, ran scanpst on the OST file, did a quick repair / online repair and even reimaged her laptop and installed a new copy of Windows 11 from USB stick, none of the above fixed the issue.

Looking at Microsoft for a solution https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/4721716/outlook-hangs-when-attaching-a-file-this-has-been?source=docs
all I saw was this "Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question. To protect privacy, user profiles for migrated questions are anonymized."

Not useful!

Getting frustrated I looked in the File, Options, General

and the first option was "Store my Outlook settings in the cloud" and once this was unticked, my colleague could attach files, whilst this is a work arround how do I get the corruption removed? as this appears to be saved in to the "Microsoft cloud" currently there is no explanation from Microsoft available for correcting this issue.

Outlook | Windows | Classic Outlook for Windows | For business

1 answer

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Tammy-Ng 3,095 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2025-07-28T13:50:31.5033333+00:00

    Dear Grove, Michael
    Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A Forum and thank you for reaching out to share your issue.

    Based on the information you provided, I understand you're experiencing a problem where Outlook hangs when clicking the "Attach file" icon either in Calendar or when composing a new message. You've already tried several troubleshooting steps, including creating a new profile, disabling all add-ins, running scanpst on the OST file, performing both quick and online repairs, and even reimaging the laptop with a fresh installation of Windows 11 from a USB stick. Unfortunately, none of these resolved the issue.

    I'm truly sorry you're facing this.

     According to my research, you might try the following troubleshooting steps:
    • Uncheck “Store my Outlook settings in the cloud” Go to File > Options > General and disable this setting. This workaround has resolved the issue in your case.
    • Clear cloud settings cache Outlook stores cloud settings in the registry at:

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Settings\Data

    You can delete the values in this key to allow Outlook to regenerate them.

    Disable the feature via Group Policy or Registry

    If you'd like to disable this feature organization-wide:

    • Group Policy: Create a policy to turn off roaming settings.
    • Registry: Add a DWORD value DisableRoamingSettings = 1 at:

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Settings

    We hope this helps resolve your issue. Please let us know if you need further assistance.

    If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".   

    Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.   

    1 person found this answer helpful.

Your answer

Answers can be marked as Accepted Answers by the question author, which helps users to know the answer solved the author's problem.