I know a lot of work has gone on with IMAP changes behind the scenes to make everything more responsive but some of these changes have adversely affected usability.

Here are my 3 main gripes:

1. If you have Outlook in Folder View so that you can see the "Sync Issues" folder you will see that Outlook 2013 now logs all activity to this folder and one ends up with thousands of entries per day filling this folder. I don't want these. Can I reduce logging?

2. If you delete, edit or create IMAP folders to your account outside of Outlook you really have to fight to get Outlook to see the changes. Sometimes you have to remove the IMAP account completely and add it again just to get a proper view of the changes. This is definitely something to do with the new caching regime. As an example Outlook does not seem to want to let go of folders deleted outside of Outlook (orphaned folders) and insists they still exist. For instance I can still move messages into these orphans and Outlook accepts them and agrees they are there even though the folder no longer exists on the server. This is an accident waiting to happen.

3. This is a bug. If I delete a group of unread messages, usually, all except the top one show as deleted and ready to purge (grey with a line through). The top one remains not deleted and unread. As soon as I mark it as read it will then show as deleted and ready to purge (grey with a line through).

Answer the first one:

- The Sync Issues folder and subfolders cannot be deleted or disabled as they are system generated folders. Additionally, we confirmed through testing that there are no configuration options to prevent data from being logged in the Sync Issues folder. This is the design behavior because certain events logged would indicate Local Failures for example and point the user to where conflicts between items may exist.

I would test the next two behaviors this time.

Cheers,
Tony Chen
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Thanks Tony

What you are saying is that Microsoft have shipped Outlook 2013 with debug logging turned on for IMAP and there is no way to turn it off. These 1000's of logs per day take up significant space. There has to be a way to log rotate them or turn them off, surely?

I can't believe they intended to ship it like this.

Jason

I have seen thousands (sometimes upwards of 30,000) of entries in the "Sync Issues (on this computer only)" folder as well. This is probably considering the fact that I have it Send/Receive every 15 mins, however I must do this, otherwise I don't receive notifications/alerts for new e-mails that arrive outside of the 'active' folder view that I leave Outlook in.

I also cannot believe that Outlook 2013 RTM was shipped with such an oversight, especially considering the amount of disk space that these logs can consume! I really hope a patch will be issued ASAP to fix this, as I've been wrestling with Outlook 2013 and all sorts of IMAP issues for about 5 days now.

Please, Tony, give us some good news...even at the least, ONLY putting the log entries that are sent with High Importance (and thus contain a red error). A configurable option between "None, High Importance, ALL" would be optimal really.

• Edited by George Merlocco Wednesday, December 19, 2012 6:30 AM

Hi Jason,

I plan to do further check for the problem of  "disable Sync Issue folder logs" in this thread. In order to avoid confusion and keep track of troubleshooting steps, can you create a new post for your next two quesions? Thank you for your understanding.

Thanks.

Cheers,
Tony Chen
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Sure. doing that now

This thread now about disable Sync Issue folder logs

By the way there is a way around it I believe. You can set archiving up to delete messages over a certain age and then apply it to that folder only. BUT I really do not want to have archiving switched on as it then applies to all new folders unless you remember to turn it off and anyway that is a sticking plaster not a cure.

Jason

Well guys. Try to add the following regestry key for checking:

e.g. For OUTLOOK 2010 :
=============
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\OST
DWORD: AlwaysSaveSyncLog
Value: 0
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Options
DWORD: DiscardConflicts
Value: 1
Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Options
DWORD: EnableConflictLogging
Value : 0

Restart Outlook to make it affects.

Cheers,
Tony Chen
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• Edited by Tony Chen CHNMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Wednesday, December 19, 2012 8:54 AM

Hi Tony, thanks so much for your quick reply with some tasty Registry bits, however they didn't appear to work for me. I made the changes to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Outlook (note the '15.0')

...Restarted Outlook 2013, but to no avail. The log entries kept piling up when switching folders and doing normal Send/Receive commands.

The entries do look like they should work, but of course if Outlook 2013 doesn't acknowledge those registry keys, then this is probably the result.

Would love to try anything else, otherwise it'd be great if you could keep this thread up-to-date with any patch announcements.

BTW, as I was saying above, it would be great to have a few options for the Sync Logging, namely to completely disable, show ONLY conflicts/errors, or enable all. It looked like the last 2 registry keys you posted would have been responsible for showing ONLY conflicts, but alas, none of them worked.

Many thanks again for your help with this (and thanks to you Jason for bringing up the issue)!

Hi Tony

I added this to both \14.0 and \15.0 in case

the logs are still building up. My feeling is that there may be a few less but they are certainly still there and still quite a lot.

Thanks for looking. I'd be interested what else you may find.

Jason

I tested it just now. The registry data I mentioned is really aimed at either decreasing synch logging or to stop specific types of conflicts.
So I can confirm that we cannot turn off this folder base on current product design. This folder is designed for getting the basic troubleshooting information of Client Access issue.

Anyway, I am thinking two way for workaround:

1. Hide the sync issue folder via MFCMAPI, visit the following link to do that.
http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/hidemovedeletemfcmapi.htm#hide

2. Create a Outlook rule to remove the items which is belongs to sync issue folder.

If someone has a better idea, please share it here. Thanks.

Cheers,
Tony Chen
Forum Support
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• Edited by Tony Chen CHNMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Thursday, December 20, 2012 2:12 AM
• Marked as answer by Tony Chen CHNMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Friday, December 28, 2012 7:36 AM
• Unmarked as answer by Technica Solutions Friday, December 28, 2012 12:48 PM

I wonder what MS were thinking here?

Hiding the folder won't stop it filling up and taking space.

Rules is probably best.

I just wrote a rule:

Apply this rule after the message arrives
from me@me.com
  and with Synchronization Log: in the subject
permanently delete it
  and stop processing more rules

Then if I run this rule on the Sync Issues folder it deletes all messages BUT it does not do it automatically. It only works if you run it manually. 

I assume this is because the messages don't "arrive" in the way other messages do.

So no luck there then.

Jason

Huh... maybe we can create a vba code to delete items in sync issue folder when Outlook Opens.

Cheers,
Tony Chen
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Hello, what can I do for you further?

Tony Chen

I'm not sure. Report back to Microsoft that this a poorly thought out 'feature' that we should be able to turn off?

We hope that the "disable sync issue folder" function would be added in next package release.

Cheers,
Tony Chen
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• Marked as answer by Technica Solutions Friday, December 28, 2012 12:48 PM

OK I'm marking "it will hopefully be added in future" as the answer.

Not the answer we want at the moment but an answer nonetheless.

Jason

chiming in here. 150 sync issue per minute to the tone of.

22:41:55 Synchronizer Version 15.0.rup

22:41:55 Synchronizing Mailbox 'xx@domain.com''

22:41:56 Synchronizing local changes in folder 'Inbox'

22:41:56 Done

30k end of day usually.

not sure it's related but OL freezes 4-6 x a day when switching bet. imap and exchange folders.

Has this issue with the sync issues folder ever been resolved??

It's been nearly 3 months since the last posting here... still getting 10's thousands of messages being logged.

Has this issue with the sync issues folder ever been resolved??

It's been nearly 3 months since the last posting here... still getting 10's thousands of messages being logged.

Now It's been nearly 6 months since the last posting here... still getting 10's thousands of messages being logged.

No news?

For me the only effect of those change is a bit strange - the Sync Issues folder disappeared from Mail folders where it was stuck for weeks.

However, the folder itself still exists (visible in All Folders) and logs the sync activity with I believe the same frequency as before.

Since Outlook 2013 completely destroyed acceptable IMAP operations (as present in 2010 and earlier), I believe the mentioned solution simply does not work for 2013 version.

Ugh...I just bought a new computer and updated by home email POP account to IMAP. I too, am having issues with my 'Sync Issues (This computer only) folder' piling up with sync logs. Also, smattered amongst the sync logs are a few 'Error synchronizing folder [8004010F-0-0-720]' and 'Terminated in error [8004010F-0-0-720]'.

Any updates on fixes?

Since my Google Apps is the free version (discontinued), it will not work with Google Apps Sync.  After uninstalling Google Apps Sync, the error messages ceased.

So it is now December 2014 and unless I missed the fix someplace there has been no progress on this problem. Here and in other forums I find no solution. I spent several hours in "Chat" with support till they want to move me to purchased support. If it is something on my end I sure would like to know what it is . I have deleted and re established accounts, moved IMAP folders back and forth etc., but still every 2 minutes I pick up a sync log error. Does anyone know if and when MS will have a fix or is there a fix to just stop the logging? My folders seem to be syncing just fine except for the darn log entry build up. Over time it eats up HD space quickly unless folder is manually emptied.

Thanks for any latest information

Checking back for any progress in this issue and I see on March 11, now 2015 there still is no solution. . FYI because of other issues I had to do a complete reinstall of Windows 8.1 and Office 2013. Sync issues went away for about 3 days then came back full force. Unbelievable. Guess folks just learn to live with the problem or have migrated to another client?