Have already experienced Outlook crashing many times under Windoze 8.1. HATE IT
Odd though this sounds, I'd recommend that you do a full backup and upgrade your OS to Windows 10, and then turn off the spyware User Experience Enhancement Features.
In my experience, Windows 10 is MUCH more usable than Win8 or Win8.1, and more stable. Granted, I still like Win7 better, but if one is already in the depths of Win8.x, I would go to Win10 and not look back.
But for God's sake, do a full backup first.
I use Thunderbird for my home email - of course I'm not connecting with an Outlook server...
Got mine yesterday and flipped outlook immediately.
Found the fix via a spiceworks.com post.