I frequently get a spinning wheel (beach ball) in Outlook 2016 for Mac.I've not been able to find a fix online for the problem.
The rainbow-colored circle is a painful sight to see for Mac users. If you’re lucky it disappears in a few seconds, but more often it remains for minutes, leaving you helplessly locked out of the app or your whole Mac. Since it’s not always clear how to deal with with the wheeling cursor or what caused it in the first place, let’s break it all down. In this article we’ll take a look at what is the spinning beach ball, why and when it shows up, and what you can do about it.
What is a spinning color wheel?
Initially, it’s a system indicator. It’s official name is the Spinning Wait Cursor, not so official — the Spinning Beach Ball of Death or SBBOD. The ball signifies that your Mac cannot handle all the tasks given to it at this moment.
Every app on your Mac has a so-called window server. When an app receives more events than it can process, the window server automatically shows you the spinning ball. It usually takes about 4 seconds for the app to decide that it’s non-responsive.
Why does the Mac spinning wheel of death appear?
Well, the reasons are countless. First, it can be a stand-alone issue with a certain app. Second, it could be faulty hardware or insufficient RAM. We’ll go over each possible issue and see how it can be fixed, depending on the cause. Sometimes, the only way out it getting a new Mac, but most of the cases can be fixed with the right software or system commands.
How to stop the spinning ball on Mac?
Microsoft Word On Mac Free
In case you just need unlock one frozen application, that’s a job for Force Quit.
To fix an application stuck with a spinning cursor right now:
- Click the Apple icon in the top left corner.
- Choose Force Quit (or press cmd+alt+esc).
- Select the app that won’t respond.
- Click Force Quit.
Simply shutting down the process is a brutal way of problem solving and it doesn’t address the issue that caused the freezing. It could have been an accidental glitch in the program, but if it keeps freezing or spreads further to other software and services, you need to look deeper.
What if the application keeps freezing when you open it again?
Reset or reinstall the freezing application. Macs don’t have a proper uninstaller and moving applications to the Trash bin leaves plenty of app leftovers. Some of them could be the reason why the spinning wheel showed up, so if you leave them the issue will stay.
How to reset a Mac app to its default settings or uninstall it
There are two ways to reset apps: one would be to use application’s own preferences or settings and look for reset options there. But in case the app won’t let you do that (because it keeps freezing), you can turn to third-party solutions, like CleanMyMac X for instance. It’s a handy app for Mac maintenance and cleaning with plenty of useful tools, including reset and uninstallation.
- Download CleanMyMac X, an app for Mac maintenance.
- Open it and click on the Uninstaller.
- Select the app you need to reset from the list.
- Click on the small arrow next to the application icon
- Click Applications Reset.
If the beach ball keeps rolling when you use the app again, reinstall it completely by pressing Uninstall instead or Reset. Remember, simply moving the app to the Trash doesn’t do the trick, since its leftover files remain on your hard drive.
Important: if you have a licence for the paid app, makes sure to save the number somewhere.
What if your whole Mac becomes unresponsive?
Possible issue: Overworked processor
One of the reasons for the wheel to show up could be that your Mac is getting old. You can figure out if that’s the case by checking the CPU usage. To check the CPU usage, turn to Activity monitor. Find it in the Applications/Utilities folder or run a Spotlight search. Or, if you have CleanMyMac X, use it’s Menu in the top bar.
The bottom table shows System load in percentage. If it’s way above 50% and remains there for long, especially without any specific reason like games or heavy rendering programs, this might be the signal your processor is the bottleneck.
Fix: If your processor is overworking regularly, only buying a new Mac will fix the problem entirely. Sorry.
Possible issue: Low disk space
You don’t even need to have a full startup disk to see the nasty ball. Just a heavily loaded hard drive, with lots of large files can already cause troubles with loading.
Fix: Hard drive cleanup. Thankfully, that’s an easy task. You can get CleanMyMac X and in free up tons of space in a few minutes. With CleanMyMac you don’t need to dig into folders and look for files you don’t need, the app will find and sort them, plus all the system junk your Mac has been accumulating for months.
Possible issue: Insufficient RAM
Another possible hardware issue is insufficient Random Access Memory. To figure out if you need more RAM, open the Activity Monitor again. It’s in the Applications/Utilities folder. In the Memory tab, you can see Memory pressure table with a graph. If the graph is red and your memory is constantly strained under all the running apps, you’ve found the problem.
Fix: You can upgrade RAM by buying and installing more of it. It’s usually enough to have 8 GB for most tasks and applications, apart from heavy video rendering and the likes. Here’s a detailed guide on how to upgrade RAM on Mac.
That’s about it concerning the spinning beach ball and how to deal with it. We hope this guide has been of help and you’ll stop the spinning wheel of death on your Mac once and for all.
Microsoft Word For Mac
These might also interest you:
Although Macs are extremely proficient computers, they sometimes experience freeze ups. This can be unfortunate when you’re in the middle of something important — a work project, or a FaceTime conversation. Modern RAM-intensive applications can easily put earlier Mac models into a coma. What should users do when an app or the macOS itself stops responding to any actions? Why can OS X freeze up all of a sudden? Read on to find out the typical reasons causing this malfunction and ways to solve the problem fast!
Discover the reasons for Mac freezes and macOS glitches and next, learn what to do when something like this happens to your computer.
- Unnecessary apps launched at startup.
Microsoft Word On Mac Spinning Wheel Of Death
Certain applications sneak into Mac’s login items and launch on macOS startup without you knowing. If something goes wrong, apps like this can freeze up in the background and slow down your Mac. Check the startup items and remove the unwanted programs launched on startup.
2. Multiple background processes.
A Mac app may be running several processes at once, and some of them can freeze up. Depending on your Mac’s RAM capacity, there can be too many processes hindering its overall performance. Check the Activity Monitor to see the list of app-related or system processes running in the background and the memory consumption.
3. Cluttered hard drive.
The chances are huge, your Mac’s hard drive needs serious maintenance and decluttering. Use macOS Optimized Storage toolkit to reclaim the disk space and restore system capacity. Alternatively, use third-party Mac cleaning application to find and delete trash, system junk, temporary files, and unused apps.
If your Mac freezes at login and you have no idea about what’s causing it, use a Safe Boot mode. It allows checking the functionality activated during startup and performing its diagnostics. To launch Safe Boot, turn off your Mac, then start it up holding down the Shift key.
If you wish to get feedback on how the process is going, restart the computer holding down the Shift and Command-V key combination. While the Mac is entering the Safe Boot, it’s Verbose Mode, will display messages about the Safe Boot troubleshooting stages. If your Mac successfully starts up with a Safe Boot the issue is fixed, so you can restart it normally.
If the problem persists, your Mac may be stuck in boot loops. Another reason for this to occur is a serious hardware-related issue demanding a more in-depth diagnostics.
If your MacBook Pro or Air is frozen, hold down Command + Control + Power keys to force-reboot your Mac. If you own one of the earlier MacBook models, use the same key combination, but press the Media Eject button instead of the Power key. Note: the force-reboot scenario will inevitably lead to data loss. The ‘hard restart’ can corrupt the files you were working on. Try recovering what is left and create a new file to save the important data. Actually, the same force-reboot scenario works for iMac or Mac mini as well.
“My Mac is frozen, and I can’t click anything” is a typical plea for help one can come across on Apple community forums. Most often it is related to the issue when Mac’s screen freezes and a user can’t even move the cursor around the desktop as a touchpad, mouse or a keyboard do not react. Also, the “spinning beach ball of death” may be present on the screen. It usually appears when your Mac’s hardware fails to handle the currently executed software task.
Microsoft Word For Mac Spinning Wheel
Other reasons are:
Complex tasks overloading the CPU
Memory-intensive apps
Lack of free space on Mac's startup disk
To understand what is causing the “beach ball,” a user needs to monitor the CPU usage, check the RAM consumption in Activity Monitor, and run hardware diagnostics. As you see, the spinning cursor is a symptom of a malfunction that needs close attention before your Mac fails.
A specific app can freeze up making your Mac partly or totally unresponsive. Here’s how to close a frozen program:
- Try switching to another macOS area by clicking on the desktop or another app window. Alternatively, use the Command-Tab key combination to switch to another program.
- Locate the app icon in the Dock, then Control-click the icon.
- Hold down the Option key (Quit will change to Force Quit on the menu).
- Click Force Quit.
If force-quitting the app didn’t work, here’s another way to abort a frozen program. Hold down Command-Option-Esc to access the Force Quit Applications window. Next, select a frozen app from the list, and click Force Quit.
On older Macs, upgrading to OS X El Capitan on top of Yosemite led to system slow down and freezing. Upgrading to macOS Sierra or High Sierra from earlier versions would cause similar issues. This is why a clean macOS installation is always preferable to prevent issues down the road. Apple users wait months before installing the latest software updates to make sure they will run a stable OS version.
To fix the freezing issue caused by an OS/software upgrade, do the following:
• If you upgraded the software, use a Time Machine backup to revert to the previous state;
• If you upgraded to the latest OS version, try downgrading to the previous version, or install the new one from scratch
Microsoft Word Free For Mac
Mac’s slow work or freeze-ups can be caused by an array of reasons. Use the ‘isolate & identify’ way of thinking to check all possible causes. Running the latest OS and software version compatible with your Mac’s hardware will help you avoid serious performance issues. Keeping your Apple computer clean and healthy will guarantee its steady work for years to come.