Hi Conrad -
I'm grateful for your help. Taking your questions in turn:
When the program "freezes", I can move around the screen but no actions I take have any effect. I have tried, certainly, for 20 seconds or more. Also, I can tell by looking at my Outlook inbox (or, I guess, a clock) approximately when the freeze happened, because beyond that time I won't have any new emails.
The manual pause feature works, and when engaged produces a result exactly like what I'm talking about. Also, maybe a hint, or maybe another problem, even when the viewer is working, a lot of times clicking on the outlook icon won't restore the outlook inbox. Instead, I have to right click on outlook in the the program manager and click on "Bring To Front".
Sorry for the trouble.