The best way to do this is to gradually narrow down the possible issues until you’re left with just the cause of the problem. Troubleshooting is all about finding the cause of a problem. There’s usually no need to remove add-ins, but if Outlook starts behaving oddly-especially if it freezes, crashes, or refuses to open-then disabling the add-ins will tell you if they’re the problem. For example, when you install Adobe’s Acrobat PDF reader, it installs an Outlook add-in that lets you make PDFs out of emails. They’re intended to make it easier for you to use a product. You may never use the add-ins, or even be aware that they’re there, but they aren’t (usually) malware or anything nasty.
However, most add-ins are installed automatically when you install a piece of software on your computer. You can install add-ins yourself by opening Outlook and clicking Home > Get Add-ins, which will show you some of the add-ins available to you. Add-ins are extra bits of functionality that software providers create to hook their application into Outlook.
