Outlook and IMAP

[carmen617]

Partially a rant, partially a plea for ideas. Sigh - I am tired of it continuously disconnecting my accounts. I personally prefer to use Outlook to collect my mail, and I have two IMAP accounts, a personal Comcast account, and my business email, which is an IMAP account through IONOS. Yes, I could switch that to Exchange, but that would cost me money, and I would still have my Comcast IMAP to deal with. I am using Office 365, fully patched and updated, and I have dozens of clients using some version of the same - Outlook with free IMAP accounts from Google, Comcast, Verizon (AOL, ugh, but so what), or other sources.

EVERY SINGLE PERSON has the same issues - for no reason, Outlook will cease sending and receiving and pop an 0x800CCCDD error message. Sometimes shutting down Outlook and turning it on again will reconnect it. Sometimes the computer has to be restarted. I used to have these issues perhaps once or twice a month, but now it seems to be happening every day. I have personally troubleshooted my own case numerous ways, creating new Outlook profiles, repairing the Office installation, removing the accounts and setting them up again - whatever, it hasn't helped. I have also searched the web and tried numerous potential fixes, things like extending the send/receive time out, or tweaking the send/receive groups. Nothing fixes it, and I'm tired of telling my clients that I have the same problems and just have to live with it. BTW, I also use a MacBook and Apple Mail has NONE of these issues with IMAP.

So, looking for suggestions. Anybody found a way to get Outlook to work better with IMAP?

 

[lan101]

EM Client as possible alternative? Lol.

 

[seashore]

Same here. Looking for a reliable web-based alternative to Outlook able to handle multiple email accounts. Tired of setting Outlook up on each device with its various glitches.

 

[Larry Sabo]

EM Client as possible alternative? Lol.

+1

 

[Markverhyden]

Have you turned off all auto checking for all accounts? Are they setup with security like TLS, etc, in other words does the email provider have that as an option? Probably not related but have you setup DMARC, SFP, and DKIM for your business email.

 

[frase]

Em Client though is a paid service +1 accounts. I never have any so called glitches with Outlook, what Office V are clients using? As that error pertains to older office versions - "scheduling".

 

[britechguy]

I never have any so called glitches with Outlook

Nor I. And all I use, or my residential clients use, with Outlook are IMAP accounts, with a rare POP account thrown in for good measure.

eM Client free allows 2 accounts: https://www.emclient.com/pricing
I have an instance set up with two accounts that's been that way for several years.

 

[britechguy]

Thunderbird is a very fine email client indeed, too.

 

[frase]

I would have to disagree on that, in regards to Thunderbird clear junk folder and spam - delete client.

 

[carmen617]

Have you turned off all auto checking for all accounts? Are they setup with security like TLS, etc, in other words does the email provider have that as an option? Probably not related but have you setup DMARC, SFP, and DKIM for your business email.

Yes, auto checking is off. Both accounts are using SSL/TLS for incoming - also outgoing for my business account. The Comcast account uses STARTTLS for outgoing - those security settings are what is recommended by the provider. And yes, all the DMARC, etc, is set up for my business email - I needed to in order to get things to work well with Constant Contact.

Error again this morning, 0x800ccc0e, screen shot attached. This happened 2 hours after turning on my system this morning, and won't clear until I restart my computer. Actually, I get this error more often than the server time out. For those of you who never get these errors with Outlook, are you using custom settings when you set up IMAP accounts? I much prefer to continue using Outlook, as it's a standard product, I have many clients using it, and it's easier to support a product I have my hands on every day. If there is a custom set up that will prevent or minimize these issues, I'm happy to learn it and use it, I just need to know what it is. No add-ons, I'm using Windows Defender for security. I do use GoContactSyncMod to sync contacts with a Google account, but I have turned that to manual. And, as I said, many, many clients with the same issues, not not just me - I just have a good test case where I can try potential solutions.

 

[britechguy]

Did you set up these accounts manually, yourself, or did you let Outlook's "account setup wizard" take care of all of the details?

 

[carmen617]

Did you set up these accounts manually, yourself, or did you let Outlook's "account setup wizard" take care of all of the details?

My personal accounts are set up manually. Most other IMAPs have to be set up manually as well, as Outlook only automatically populates Google accounts properly. For example, with AOL and Yahoo accounts, their OAUTH2 settings don't work with Outlook, so they still require app passwords. As a residential support tech, I am continuously setting up customer's Comcast, Yahoo, Google, and AOL accounts in Outlook (the AOL and Yahoo almost all actually Verizon.com email addresses). The only automated process I sometimes use is to set security to auto and let the server tell me which settings to use.

In my own case, what's frustrating is that I know the server settings are correct - they work properly and continuously on my Android phone (in Outlook, no less), my iPad, and my Mac. It's just Office 365's Outlook, Microsoft's premium mail client, that can't handle this stuff. And, of course, my daily driver is my Windows machine, and Outlook is where I prefer to do most of my emailing.

 

[britechguy]

Outlook only automatically populates Google accounts properly.

I'm sorry, but that's absolutely incorrect. The database of providers that Outlook has at its disposal is vast. Comcast happens to be a very popular one in these parts, and I have never manually configured a single one of them, but just gone through the Outlook account setup wizard. And I've done that for far more than Comcast, and far more than only Outlook, too.

There isn't a modern email client in existence that doesn't handle account setup for all of "the majors" and a heck of a lot of "the minors" with grace and agility.

Delete the accounts and set them up again via the Outlook built-in process, for starters.

 

[carmen617]

I'm sorry, but that's absolutely incorrect. The database of providers that Outlook has at its disposal is vast. Comcast happens to be a very popular one in these parts, and I have never manually configured a single one of them, but just gone through the Outlook account setup wizard. And I've done that for far more than Comcast, and far more than only Outlook, too.

There isn't a modern email client in existence that doesn't handle account setup for all of "the majors" and a heck of a lot of "the minors" with grace and agility.

Delete the accounts and set them up again via the Outlook built-in process, for starters.

Sorry - you are right - it's the AOL ones I have to do manually because of the OAUTH/ app password. I definitely had those set up automatically previously, but have taken the accounts out and put them back in again to test.

 

[britechguy]

And on that note about AOL, just for the fun of it I tried Outlook with an ancient Yahoo email account, too, and it doesn't handle their OAUTH correctly either. By contrast, em Client goes through the process with grace.

But I know that I've set up a lot of @comcast.net accounts in Outlook over time and as of the last cycle of doing so, Outlook was dealing with those just fine.

Of course, I should know better than anyone that this can change at any time. That being said, for any email service provider, if a given email client does handle the setup gracefully, I will always allow it to do so rather than my putting in server information myself and trying to go through OAUTH somehow myself separate from the email client setup.

I've actually got a @verizon.net account that's part of an estate, and that's been handled by AOL behind the scenes since Verizon got out of the email biz, that I finally need to close over the next few weeks.

 

[carmen617]

And on that note about AOL, just for the fun of it I tried Outlook with an ancient Yahoo email account, too, and it doesn't handle their OAUTH correctly either. By contrast, em Client goes through the process with grace.

But I know that I've set up a lot of @comcast.net accounts in Outlook over time and as of the last cycle of doing so, Outlook was dealing with those just fine.

Of course, I should know better than anyone that this can change at any time. That being said, for any email service provider, if a given email client does handle the setup gracefully, I will always allow it to do so rather than my putting in server information myself and trying to go through OAUTH somehow myself separate from the email client setup.

I've actually got a @verizon.net account that's part of an estate, and that's been handled by AOL behind the scenes since Verizon got out of the email biz, that I finally need to close over the next few weeks.

Where I live, Verizon was bigger than Comcast, so I have hundreds of clients with old Verizon email accounts through either AOL or Yahoo that they don't want to let go of. I really don't understand why their version of OAUTH isn't handled by Outlook, but it for sure isn't. Again, works fine on a Mac.

 

[britechguy]

Here it was about a 50/50 split between Verizon and Comcast for a very, very long time.

I don't know why a very great many people, and I don't mean in business settings, insist on holding on to email clients, either. The webmail clients of all "the majors" allow you to set up access to addresses outside their own ecosystems such that the webmail interface serves precisely the same purpose as any email client used to. And I have had far, far fewer issues with webmail clients so configured than standalone email clients over the years.

I try to get my clients to pick their favorite webmail interface from the accounts they hold and transition to one of them any time we hit functional end of life for whatever email client they had been using. It makes life so much easier, particularly since they can hop on to their email from any web connected computer in the world.

 

[nlinecomputers]

The database of providers that Outlook has at its disposal is vast.

That has nothing to do with Outlook there is no database. Outlook can be auto setup IF the provider creates the proper formated autoconnect record in their DNS records. Most major providers have done so. It is a requirement for the proper setup of any exchange server but other IMAP based services can do the same. If you know what you are doing you could create one for an in-house Linux based email server.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Errors such as the OP reports for me are always the fault of 3rd party AV. Uninstall, reboot and problem is gone.

Also, ditto the above, autodiscover.whatever.com just feeds an XML file that fills in the configuration form for you. These are providers learning how to autoconfigure Outlook, not Outlook doing it for them.

 

[britechguy]

Gentlemen,

Though I thank you, sincerely, for the information about what's actually happening "under the hood," from an end user perspective Outlook is "doing the voodoo that it does so well" in setting up accounts.

And a database doesn't mean an RDBMS. Even if they're drawing from the individual autoformat records of thousands of separate providers, taken as a collectivity that is a database.