Showstopper: Office “update/upgrade of identity” takes hours and makes outlook unusable

Office 2010 (upgraded to 2011): update/upgrade of identity takes hours and makes outlook unusable

For the last two days, once a day, a dialog (apparently of the db daemon) opens:

The dialog already has opened in the past, but only after I installed

an office update and by then it took less long for something to happen 

(I don't know if it terminated correctly, because I had to leave and 

I don't know if power saving is prevented by the operation).

This is a show stopper: I cannot use outlook any more.

I consider leaving office altogether and use some open office

+ thunderbird/mail