I received support from Microsoft Support person called Ejiro Ewhubare.
It was taking up to 1 minute for me to create a new MS Word document with a message displayed "Contacting Server"
Ejiro directed me to go to Regedit and to rename the Key "Outlook" to Outlook.old
Since then I have been unable to use Outlook and all my settings have been lost.
My archive.pst file is over 25 GB in size, and it looks like it has wiped it from my computer and is now downloading all the emails over the past 15 years from the server.
In retrospect I should never have taken the action that he directed me to do.
But I assumed he knew what he was doing, and could simply change back the settings that he told me to change.
Now I can't contact customers as I don't have access to the past email conversations that we have had.
This would never happen with Apple support.
Do Microsoft not care about the training or experience of the support people, or thee damage they can do to their customer's business?
Dave