Outlook 2016 default account puzzle

[Larry Sabo]

My customer's Outlook 2016 is behaving weirdly. The default account is identified as “Outlook” and the IMAP account is (similar to) “doug@bell.net.” When Doug sends an e-mail, it frequently appears in Outlook>Sent items rather than the doug@bell.net>Sent. A message or two might appear in the doug@bell.net account, but very few. Drafts also appear only in the Outlook>Drafts. Received mail appears only in the doug@bell.net Inbox, IIRC. This is obviously a dog's breakfast. If I make doug@bell.net the default account, he doesn’t have access to the Auto-Complete List (. nk2) file when composing mail. I understand that the default Outlook account is just a local PST for storing Calendar, Tasks and Contacts so why is it storing his mail and why is the mail not appearing in the IMAP account doug@bell.net?

Any help much appreciated as I struggle with Outlook every time I try to solve weird problems like this.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Just to close this off, the problem seemed to just fix itself! I created a new Outlook profile in Control Panel\Mail but didn't correctly set it as the default properly. When I opened Outlook, it opened with the original profile and worked perfectly???

After deleting many superfluous messages in the Sent folder, it wouldn't send a test message and appeared to be syncing indefinitely. I received my copy of the test message even though it was still sitting in the Outbox after re-opening Outlook. Several times, I couldn't re-open Outlook unless I ran Outlook.exe /ResetNavPane. Restarting Outlook or the PC didn't clear the Outbox. We just left is syncing and went about other business.

Today, my customer told me that after a very long time, the syncing finished and he was able to send and receive messages normally. He has over 11,600 messages in his Sent folder and I suspect this may have something to do with the slow sync.

Anyway, the problem appears to have resolved itself. Slow or bizarre syncing appears to be a common problem.

 

[HCHTech]

God I hate IMAP. Most folks will NEVER cleanup their email, so it's not IF it will fail, but WHEN. If the sync takes 20 minutes to complete and the check for new mail is every 10 minutes, you are going to have a bad time. Even forced cleanup where you export the metric crap ton of email to a local PST, then try to do an en-masse deletion on webmail is time consuming and frustrating. God forbid they figure out how to make sub-folders which many hosts don't sync. Ugh.

And it's no wonder folks DON'T cleanup their email, either! The longer you have an address, the more junk mail you get. Even if you do invest the time to cleanup, another day goes by and there are another few dozen mails to deal with. The cost-benefit ratio for keeping your inbox clear is just too darned low. Oh, and don't you dare suggest they get a new email address to start fresh - it's the end of the world, I tell you!

Wow - that turned into a rant.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Wow - that turned into a rant.

LOL!

 

[Computer Bloke]

After deleting many superfluous messages in the Sent folder,

A handy trick I've used for years on my own computers is to configure Thunderbird to save sent messages in the Inbox instead of the Sent folder. That way they pop up right in front of me and get subjected to the immediate respond/file/delete triage that is the key to an empty inbox.

It's the logical successor to Inbox Zero: Sent Messages Zero!

(I think you'll find it's actually spelt CDO.)

 

[Computer Bloke]

God I hate IMAP.

You're hating the wrong thing.

Try hating Outlook instead. IMAP works beautifully with a decent email client.

 

[Larry Sabo]

It's the logical successor to Inbox Zero: Sent Messages Zero!

My customer normally has an empty Inbox. He's a very successful retired businessman or executive and seems to practice the principles of Zero Inbox naturally, without the separate folders. His one bad habit has been using the Deleted folder to hold messages he wants to reference later. I think I've cured him of that practice.

 

[HCHTech]

Try hating Outlook instead. IMAP works beautifully with a decent email client.

Well, even if I grant you this, Outlook has a huge percentage of the market and little 'ol me with my opinions aren't about to change that. So I think I stand by my original statement.

 

[Sky-Knight]

No... Outlook is a fine IMAP client. IMAP itself is simply deficient to the needs of modern mail. There's a reason Google is forcing everyone to a web mail client... and it's the simple fact that equipment end users have in front of them simply isn't powerful enough to handle the ludicrous horde of email everyone keeps forever.

Outlook hooked to M365 is using Exchange native connectivity, that's basically a tweaked IMAP, and those Outlooks live forever. But there's a rub... they don't have all the mail local, they're just looking at whatever the cache value is configured to use. And when you need to sort, search or whatever you're putting that database call on the server where it belongs. The client itself is dumb and doesn't need to be much.

You can attach Outlook to Google Mail and have it live forever too, you just need the policies in place to get old mail out of the inbox and into another folder, or deleted... whatever you're going to do. That's all M365 does by default... policies to manage the mail for users, because they won't.

And I haven't even gotten to the authentication limitations of the protocol... Which don't have to be there either... but are... ugh. Yeah this is a place Outlook falls down. It can't MFA IMAP.

 

[Computer Bloke]

Exchange native connectivity, that's basically a tweaked IMAP

MAPI is only a tweaked IMAP if you're solving a crossword. The Exchange message protocol itself is based on X.400 and completely different from RFC3501 IMAP. They look very much the same from the outside, but they're really not.

Outlook has certainly become better at handling IMAP than it used to be (and the 2016/2019 versions aren't at all bad for smallish message stores) but its main purpose is to act as the client-facing bit of Exchange, which it does very well. As a general rule we try to match Outlook with Exchange and anything-but-Outlook with IMAP. It seems to work well for us.

 

[Sky-Knight]

MAPI is only a tweaked IMAP if you're solving a crossword. The Exchange message protocol itself is based on X.400 and completely different from RFC3501 IMAP. They look very much the same from the outside, but they're really not.

Outlook has certainly become better at handling IMAP than it used to be (and the 2016/2019 versions aren't at all bad for smallish message stores) but its main purpose is to act as the client-facing bit of Exchange, which it does very well. As a general rule we try to match Outlook with Exchange and anything-but-Outlook with IMAP. It seems to work well for us.

Given history, that's really not a bad call. Other than well... Outlook users won't give it up! ROFL