Outlook 2013 hangs indefinitely at “Loading Profile”. If you run Outlook in safe mode (outlook /safe) it does open up fine.
The fix I found for this seemed like a long shot, but it worked like a charm.
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My solution: If you have an nVidia graphics card, try updating your driver from nVidia.com. There is some sort of bug/incompatibility here, and in my encounters this has quickly taken care of the problem.