Hi, I have been having problems with Outlook 2013 and synchronization of IMAP folders. When I open Outlook it works fine for 15-20 minutes and then Send/Receive for some of the IMAP accounts gets stuck. The task Synchronizing subscribed folders for stays with Processing forever and never completes.

Subsequent Send/Receive actions do not retrieve new emails. I have to manually cancel the task that is stuck and then be able to receive new emails.

This behavior happened quite randomly, I havent been able to identify a pattern but it makes Outlook 2013 useless because I have to constantly check if the Send/Receive is stuck. I tried deleting and recreating my email accounts but this did not fix the problem.

Another odd behavior I am seeing is the Sync log issues. Again quite randomly Outlook 2013 will start synchronizing a folder and this will continue indefinitely. Within an hour the Sync Issues folder will get thousands of entries like this one:

13:15:07 Synchronizer Version 15.0.rup
13:15:07 Synchronizing Mailbox ''
13:15:08 Synchronizing server changes in folder 'IvanL'
13:15:09 Done

It seems as if Outlook goes into a loop. After a restart it works fine for some time and then the above problems start happening again.

Any help is much appreciated.

• Edited by Ivan L Sunday, October 28, 2012 1:38 PM

Based on the sync log, there might be something wrong in the IvanL subfolder. I suggest you logon your mailbox through web-based access and move all of items from IvanL folder to another new creating folder and then sync from Outlook client to check if the issue still persists.

You may also first disable AVG/Firewall and run Outlook.exe in safe mode ("Outlook.exe /safe") to test the result.

Cheers,
Tony Chen
Forum Support
________________________________________
Come back and mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.
If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tnmff@microsoft.com.

• Proposed as answer by lawrema Tuesday, March 19, 2013 11:17 AM

OK, my son found the answer for me. It's on this site under "Office 2013 doesn't sync with Live Mail."

I simply had to change the server to m.hotmail.com. This fixed the problem for me because when I installed Office 2013, it created an Exchange email account for my Live Mail. I deleted the "old" (IMAP) account and changed the server on the Exchange account and it worked.

I'm hoping that this might strike a chord with you and give you an Aha! moment! :-)

Good luck!

Lynn

• Proposed as answer by Cluelass Wednesday, October 31, 2012 11:26 PM
• Marked as answer by Tony Chen CHNMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Thursday, November 01, 2012 10:28 AM
• Unmarked as answer by Tony Chen CHNMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Thursday, November 01, 2012 10:31 AM

• Proposed as answer by ScotBrat Friday, December 14, 2012 1:14 AM
• Unproposed as answer by ScotBrat Friday, December 14, 2012 1:14 AM
• Proposed as answer by addchild315 Saturday, February 02, 2013 1:03 AM

Same problem here as well. Installed Win 8 Pro on a clean HD, then installed office 2010, no AV or other programs. Office 2010 refused to correctly sync any of my 4 imap (aol) email accounts. It simply returned errors .....

So Ok, I decided to obtain and install Office 2013 and guess what ?? Same problem !

2010 worked fine with Win 7 but using exactly the same settings wouldn't work with Win 8 and it appears that 2013 is the same. Judging by the amount of questions on the web, it looks like this is a major issue that Microsoft are remaining very tight lipped about.

Not at all happy !!!!!

• Edited by Bob the Sparkie Wednesday, November 07, 2012 7:38 PM

Having the same issues as everyone else with my IMAP account from 1&1.  Have had the same accounts working just fine with Win7 and Outlook 2010 for years.  Installed Outlook 2013 and couldn't get any email more recent than 7/31 to download in my inbox.  It doesn't freeze up... just goes through the sync process and then the sync process ends as though the process ended normally.

Installed Win 8 in a new partition, installed Outlook 2013 and have the same exact issue - nothing more recent than 7/31.  In sub-folders, however, all emails are current.  Been trying to get it to work for days now and finally gave up.  Installed 2010 (didn't un-install 2013) and within 5 minutes had ALL my emails downloaded. The other apps of Office 2013 (PowerPoint, Word, etc.) have some nice functionality so I'll most likely be uninstalling Outlook for now and just revert back to the 2010 version for the time being.  What really "kills" me though is the fact that I don't see anything here from Microsoft....not even a "we're working on it" post.  They expect a lot out of their partners but they cannot even follow the standards of customer service that they expect their partners to follow.  That is what really infuriates me more than anything.  I'm a software engineer and if we treated out customers the same way, we would have them jumping ship faster than anything.  Instead I guess Microsoft must feel like we're a captive audience and hence there's no sense of urgency here.

• Proposed as answer by Himesh_Shah Tuesday, January 21, 2014 4:14 AM
• Unproposed as answer by Himesh_Shah Tuesday, January 21, 2014 4:14 AM

Hi,

This is just to update that the product group confirmed that this was a bug in the customer preview build of Outlook 2013...which was fixed in the RTM build (15.0.4420.1017).

If user's on here are still facing synchronisation issues with IMAP while already being on the RTM build..please let us know.

Thanks

Rocky

• Proposed as answer by T Raveendra Wednesday, March 27, 2013 12:41 PM

Hi Rocky, I am running an RTM build; Outlook 2013 (15.0.4420.1017) MSO (15.0.4433.1506) and having IMAP sync issues against Gmail (endless loop)

• Edited by Tzur Turkenitz Sunday, December 16, 2012 7:11 AM

Hello Tzur,

Thanks for your reply. Could you please explain a little more in detail on the IMAP sync issues you are seeing. And what do you mean when you say "endless loop".

Thank You, Tzur.

Regards

Rocky

• Proposed as answer by ex-ms Wednesday, December 26, 2012 9:33 PM
• Unproposed as answer by ex-ms Wednesday, December 26, 2012 9:34 PM

Check this out.

http://www.slipstick.com/featured/what-you-need-to-know-about-outlook-2013/

Outlook 2013 doesn't work with GMail. Maybe this is true for other mail servers like Smarter Mail?

But Windows Mail does work with GMail etc..

Nice one Microsoft.

• Edited by BayTree Wednesday, January 02, 2013 9:12 AM

I installed Outook 2013 yesterday - and had the same problem. I solved it with removing Outlook from Windows Search.

Please tell if it does help.

pholki

• Edited by pholki Tuesday, February 05, 2013 9:51 PM
• Proposed as answer by pholki Wednesday, February 06, 2013 6:23 PM

I've found a possible workaround:

• go to Send/Receive > Send/Receive Groups > Define Send/Receive Groups
• edit the default group
• for each IMAP account select "Use custom behaviour below" and then unselect all folders under "Folder Options" (except of course your inbox if it is selectable at all)

I receive notifications on new emails in all accounts ..

• Edited by Matthias Heinsius Wednesday, March 06, 2013 6:41 PM
• Proposed as answer by Philabob Thursday, March 07, 2013 6:36 PM

Is Microsoft even working on this issue? I have a client with the same problem and I had to downgrade them to Office 2010 so he could get his emails.  Talk about a pain in the ass. He is using IMAP service from hover.com

I tried all the above methods with no luck. 

• Edited by mediopolis Monday, March 18, 2013 4:32 PM

I had the same problem with IMAP.
My domain is on one.com and I have been running with Office 2013 for about a month and a half.
The problem occurred a few days ago where the inbox suddenly did not receive any emails.
No warnings popped up (M$: We really want warnings that affect reception of email to pop up), but after a few days wondering where my emails were, I checked the webmail where some 20 emails were waiting for me. (I don't get much spam)

After checking the sync folder where it reported sync errors:

18:57:32 Synchronizer Version 15.0.rup
18:57:32 Synchronizing Mailbox 'x@x.x'
18:57:32 Synchronizing Hierarchy
18:57:32 Error synchronizing folder
18:57:32                                           [8004010F-0-0-720]
18:57:32                1 folder(s) updated in online store
18:57:32 Terminated in error
18:57:32                                           [8004010F-0-0-720]

I tried deactivating addins and then compacted the ost-folder. Whichever of these things worked, suddenly I could retrieve email again...

I still gets sync errors (same as above) every once in a while, but at least mails are flowing again.

• Proposed as answer by dp30 Tuesday, April 16, 2013 8:13 PM

I had the same problem with IMAP.
My domain is on one.com and I have been running with Office 2013 for about a month and a half.
The problem occurred a few days ago where the inbox suddenly did not receive any emails.
No warnings popped up (M$: We really want warnings that affect reception of email to pop up), but after a few days wondering where my emails were, I checked the webmail where some 20 emails were waiting for me. (I don't get much spam)

After checking the sync folder where it reported sync errors:

18:57:32 Synchronizer Version 15.0.rup
18:57:32 Synchronizing Mailbox 'x@x.x'
18:57:32 Synchronizing Hierarchy
18:57:32 Error synchronizing folder
18:57:32                                           [8004010F-0-0-720]
18:57:32                1 folder(s) updated in online store
18:57:32 Terminated in error
18:57:32                                           [8004010F-0-0-720]

I tried deactivating addins and then compacted the ost-folder. Whichever of these things worked, suddenly I could retrieve email again...

I still gets sync errors (same as above) every once in a while, but at least mails are flowing again.

I too had this problem.

Compacted the OST and then things started working again.

Outlook was hanging forever with no network access on 'processing' on one of my IMAP accounts just as described.  Thank you for suggesting the compact.  I guess it does a check on the file too.

• Proposed as answer by dbdadyo Wednesday, April 17, 2013 3:05 AM

As for me I got rid of the imap thing altogether I had a 6 year backup of all my emails already so I started up the outlook 2013 from scratch using manual settings pop3, (not automatic imap) account and that took care of the constant synch problem, I used the carbonite backup program to get all my emails back to 2007 put back in place..be careful of them they have extra charges if you get in a bind, just pay close attention when they are doing their remote and just before they send you to the payment team tell them you would like to try it yourself first, and then call & pay if you cant still get you email history restored In My opinion the IMAP is a good thing, they just need to work out the bugs, hopefully soon

• Proposed as answer by dbdadyo Wednesday, April 17, 2013 3:17 AM
• Edited by dbdadyo Wednesday, April 17, 2013 3:21 AM

For anyone having issues with messages not showing up via IMAP in a timely manner (even when webmail and other email clients receive them close to instantly), try this workaround:

1. Open a main instance (window) of Outlook to use for testing.
2. Open a second instance of Outlook and point at the inbox of your first IMAP account.
3. Open a third instance of Outlook and point at the inbox of your second IMAP account.
4. Open a fourth instance of Outlook and point at the inbox of your third IMAP account.
5. until all accounts are represented by pointing at their inboxes in a separate window.
6. In the main instance, send test emails to all accounts in the profile.
7. Note that ALL accounts receive their email INSTANTLY (or close to it).

For some reason, the official production release of Outlook 2013 requires Outlook to be literally pointed at an IMAP inbox in order for it to respect IMAP delivery without delay. The only way around this is to have Outlook literally point at each IMAP inbox for which you want instant delivery of emails. If you are willing to leave all of these Outlook windows open during your session, you will receive your IMAP-account emails very quickly.

• Edited by thrivejn Thursday, June 13, 2013 5:25 PM

This is what worked for me (from http://superuser.com/a/621665):

The workaround:
1. Write down all IMAP account settings
2. Delete the account in Outlook
3. Go to C:\Users{username}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\
4. Delete .ost file
5. Setup IMAP account making sure to set "Mail to keep offline" to "All"

Cheers,

Ahmed

• Proposed as answer by Flashg90 Tuesday, July 23, 2013 8:27 PM

With outlook 2013 open and configured with gmail imap, my bandwidth monitor was showing 40-50mb an hour of inbound usage.

seiferflo's answer: This answer solved the issue immediatly.

• Edited by nicnac Thursday, July 25, 2013 4:25 AM extra detail

I'm having some strange behavior as well (Same topic, not exactly the same issue).

-My issue related to outlook 2013 x64, windows 8 pro x64 and yahoo australian mailbox (.au domain).

-Yahoo mailbox setup perfect, yahoo supports imap as well, no need to muck around (some other yahoo domains got some imap issues as I've researched it back a couple of months, now I don't see any issues related to AU domain)

-Recently reinstalled my pc, everything clean so its not a "reinstall should solve the issue" (new folder structure, no outlook pst backup/replace, everything clean install and setup)

Issue:

When the mail synchronization begins (I set to synch all mails, from beginning), the synch process stops after a while (no errors). But the latest mail I see in the folders are never the newest.

It only downloads a chunk of mails, from all folders, but not doing a thorough synching.
If I restart the synch process to check for new mails the download of the mails continue again, for a period of time and _some_ older mails downloading again.

So I kind of have to manually download my mails over and over. So far (last half an hour since I push the refresh when I can) didn't finish and I assume it will take days to download all my mails from this mailbox with this paste... if not weeks. :D

So currently I don't see the latest mails arriving, but some old mails (e.g.: in my inbox now I see mail from 01/11/2012, but if I got some fresh mails I have to check it via browser since I have no clue if there are new mails or not).

Looking for some help or solution.

• Edited by H0PE Monday, September 02, 2013 8:35 AM

• Proposed as answer by Zoranporan Tuesday, November 19, 2013 2:18 PM

hi, i have the same issue, after that i manually removed the .ost file, and reconfigured outlook with imap, i had to set in account settings-other settings-under the tab advanced settings in root folder address (or something like this in english) the word inbox. 

then initially i changed the cache to 1 month, then i rechanged it to 12 months. well that seems to worked till now for me.. hope my english is understandable. the email imap address is hosted by aruba.it, but i think it's the same for all, or better i hope for you.. lemme know if this works for you.

bye 

• Proposed as answer by Zaher.Haidar Monday, December 02, 2013 11:11 AM

• Proposed as answer by Michael534 Thursday, December 05, 2013 8:54 PM
• Unproposed as answer by Michael534 Thursday, December 05, 2013 8:54 PM

I have finally solved this, for my set up at least.  I had two PCs, both on Outlook 2013 and one works perfectly, the other hangs. So at least I knew it was possible.  I tried many different suggestions for the one that hangs, and maybe they all helped, but the one that finally nailed it was to change the send/receive group settings on my IMAP account.  This is referenced earlier in this thread. 

1.  Go to the drop down list for Send/Receive Groups under the SEND/RECEIVE. 

2. Select Define/Receive Groups and select the Edit button for the All Accounts setting.

3. Now select each IMAP account that isn't working in turn. 

4. To each, deselect the auto synch by clicking the "Use the custom behavior defined below" radio button.

5. Manually select all the folders you want to sync to outlook

It is such a pleasure to see synch taking a few seconds again!!

Just in case this isn't enough on its own, before doing this I deleted all the .ost files so that Outlook had rebuild them (just in case any were corrupt)

I hope this helps.  Good luck everyone. 

• Edited by Michael534 Friday, December 06, 2013 5:40 AM

My ISP tells me they've had so many complaints about Outlook 2013 with IMAP4 they've tried various things to get it working with no luck.

The main IMAP4 account I'm trying to get working works fine with every other IMAP4 client I've tried, various other versions of Outlook, Android, iPhone etc. and I've spent ages fiddling with settings as described earlier in this thread and the other thread on here.

Does not work...

• Proposed as answer by JoeGreyHair Wednesday, December 18, 2013 5:24 PM
• Unproposed as answer by JoeGreyHair Wednesday, December 18, 2013 5:24 PM

I have been following this thread for the last 4 weeks since I updated to Windows 8.1 and Outlook 2013 and experienced most of the same problems mentioned above.

Having spent a couple of hours with my ISP yesterday, I was finally left on my own with the same comment that "there are many problems with Outlook 2013 and no-one seems to have a solution yet.

A few more hours today trying the various fixes mentioned above and I seem to have resolved the problem now as detailed below:

1. Closed Outlook 2013

2. Copied the ost files for my accounts to a separate folder, just in case.

3. Deleted the ost file for my IMAP account

4. Set up windows live mail and setup my IMAP account in there.  Left it to synchronise everything for a while and then checked each folder to see if there were any of the duplicated emails that were giving me problems before.  Wherever I found a duplicate message, I deleted so that only one was left. Then I re-sync'd to my server and closed Live Mail.  I am not sure if this was part of the solution but it was a step that I carried out.

5. Now went in to Control Panel/Mail and setup a new profile and unchecked the box for always starting with this profile.

6. In the new profile settings I setup ONLY my IMAP account using all the default settings and then stared Outlook 2013 with the profile. I allowed a good while before making further changes to just make sure everything was downloaded correctly.

7. Then on the Send/Receive tab I selected define send/receive settings and edited them so that "Use custom behaviour defined below" was selected and then ensured that "inbox" was checked.

8. I changed the scheduling so that a send/receive would occur automatically every 5 minutes.  I also checked "perform a send & receive when exiting"

9. I allowed this to run for about 2 hours checking that synchronisation was occurring through to the server and also to my Android phone email account.

10. I then closed Outlook 2013 and went to the file location for the ost files. In here I renamed my exchange mailbox file to .old

11. I reopend Outlook and checked that everything had synchronised ok again.

12.  After a few minutes I added my Exchange account (Office 365) as a new account and allowed it to sync through.  This has been running for a few hours now and seems ok so far.

13. I have now deleted the old outlook profile via control panel

As mentioned in an earlier thread I think this has something to do with the order in which the accounts are added to to Outlook 2013 and it seems you must add the IMAP accounts first in order for synchronisation to work properly.

If I have a return to the same problems I will updated this post.  In the meantime I hope this helps.

UPDATE 19/12/2013:  I have applied the same fix to another machine with similar problem and this has also now resolved the issue.

• Edited by JoeGreyHair Thursday, December 19, 2013 11:00 AM
• Proposed as answer by YKLam Friday, December 20, 2013 4:36 AM
• Unproposed as answer by YKLam Friday, December 20, 2013 4:36 AM

I "upgraded" from 2010 to 2013 (it feels more like a downgrade).

Lost 2 days trying to make Outlook 2013 with my 2 IMAP accounts, following advise found here, all to no avail (sometimes it worked OK for a few moments, then failed).

Solution: installed eM Client, works great, so far I like it better than Outlook 2010 which was quite good.

Note: Outlook MAC 2011 is also bad, it has to fetch all IMAP messages every time it is restarted.

• Edited by VikingoTropical Monday, January 13, 2014 4:16 AM

Hi,

I have the same problems. My provider is Arcor in Germany with IMAP.

From time to time the Inbox items don't getting synchronized. Ill have to recreate the whole account and then it works for several days or even weeks. But suddenly it stucks again and no mails are fetched any more.

I tested to remove KB2837618 but that doesn't solve my problem.

Still strange.

• Proposed as answer by Eric Månsson Saturday, January 18, 2014 11:17 AM
• Unproposed as answer by Eric Månsson Saturday, January 18, 2014 11:17 AM

Hi, I have been searching for this answer for a long time, found an answer that worked for me, and it is simple.

1. Switch to the FOLDER tab. (HOME SEND/RECEIVE FOLDER VIEW)

2. Click in IMAP Folders  button (if you have a small screen you might only see IMAP that brings up two alternatives, IMAP Folders and Update Folder List)

3. Unmark "When displaying hierarchy in Outlook, show only subscribed folders" 

4. Then just press "OK" and then do a normal "Send/Recieve All Folders".

If this doesnt work try removing KB2837618 and/or KB2837643

Hope this helps someone

P.S. Tried this on win8.0 and win7 D.S

• Proposed as answer by Stefan1712 Monday, January 20, 2014 4:54 PM

• Proposed as answer by Tig Bart Wednesday, January 29, 2014 7:17 PM

Yep. I wish rolling back was an option, but we only have 2003. Its now 2014, and the program is still crap, unless you have an ms 2013 exchange server. 

• Proposed as answer by rob0702 Saturday, April 05, 2014 9:42 AM

So firstly I'm having to use firefox to post this message as the page keeps crashing IE!

Anyway I think I have a workaround (I don't want to say Fix as it's not fixing the underlying problem). To set the scene I've been using Outlook 2013 for some time and never had any issues with syncing my IMAP account. I used to have an Exchange Account and IMAP account configured within the same profile and everything worked as expected with my Calendar, Contacts, etc being stored on Exchange and IMAP purely used for email.

Recently my Exchange account has disappeared so I have moved to an IMAP account only with contacts, calendar and such being stored locally. Guess what? I hit the dreaded sync issues causing major problems, duplicate emails and more. Tried everything mentioned here and no luck problem after problem. About to revert to Outlook 2010 I stumbled across the following link

http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/2013/imap-accounts-outlook-2013/

In short Microsoft have changed the way calendar, contacts and such are stored with IMAP accounts in Outlook 2013. Previously they were stored in separate files and are now stored in one. The link describes it in detail and also details how to move the contact/calendar data to a separate data file. 

This is what I have done, I have moved my Calendar/Contacts/Notes to a separate PST file, since doing this NO SYNC ISSUES and I get all my mail!

The problem seems to be when everything is stored in the OST file that is created by default when adding an IMAP account. Hopefully someone from Microsoft will look into this and produce a fix.

• Proposed as answer by rob0702 Saturday, April 05, 2014 9:45 AM
• Unproposed as answer by rob0702 Saturday, April 05, 2014 4:20 PM

Hi Lynn, 

Could you please explain me how to change the server to m.hotmail.com? My knowledge is quite basic, so if you could explain it to me step by step it would be great. My outlook is not syncing my folders...

Thank you,

Laia 

• Proposed as answer by Geoffey Wednesday, November 19, 2014 1:05 AM
• Unproposed as answer by Geoffey Wednesday, November 19, 2014 1:06 AM

Hi Lynn, 

Could you please explain me how to change the server to m.hotmail.com? My knowledge is quite basic, so if you could explain it to me step by step it would be great. My outlook is not syncing my folders...

Thank you,

Laia 

Click File => Office account => Account and social network settings drop down ==> account settings

Double click your Exchange Activesync account to reveal the server information field.

Change it to m.hotmail.com and click next. 

Unfortunately my field  changes itself to blue406-m.hotmail.com whenever it field like it and that negates the sync until I change it back again.

I will submit another post on this problem.

By the way if you have not set up as Exchange Activesync account then you need to do so and I guess that's another question for you to post here.

• Proposed as answer by Markies33 Sunday, December 14, 2014 10:26 PM
• Unproposed as answer by Markies33 Sunday, December 14, 2014 10:26 PM
• Proposed as answer by Markies33 Sunday, December 14, 2014 10:44 PM

I think I just found the sollution......

I'll try to get it on papaer and post it here tomorrow.

Mark

• Proposed as answer by Markies33 Sunday, December 14, 2014 10:47 PM

After I installed Windows 10 and set up Office 13 with it, I ran into the same issues.

What's really frustrating for me is that my Outlook is not generating any error messages when problems with the synchronisation appear. It stops syncing with the confirmation that everything went fine. So the only way to check whether there was an error or not is to check my spam folder.

I also disabled my firefall and spamfilter programs, ran Outlook in safe mode, rebooted a couple of times but I can't figure out to find a reproduceable solution for it. Also stopping the sync and restarting it again does not work reproduceable for me.

I haven't had this issue with Win 8.1 and Outlook 2013 but now with Win 10 it appeared.By the way something else why is the folder now called Office 2015? I haven't heard of a new version of Office yet.