Mac Mail - Problems Sync'ing Inbox with IMAP Hotmail

Anonymous
2013-09-24T00:01:21+00:00

I'm having a problem in syncing my hotmail e-mails through IMAP on Mail for mac.

I've followed the steps in **How to set up Mac Mail to sync your Outlook.com account**to set up my mail in Mail for mac and it seemed to work. The initial sync worked fine, but then after I tried to copy/paste a load of my old POP3 mail from the same hotmail account into the IMAP mailbox, I have started to get issues where Mac Mail never finishes sync'ing. I now have had no new email land in my inbox for 5 days !   :-(

All the folders under the inbox and all the other mail items such as sent, drafts, junk etc are synchronising but none of the new e-mails in the inbox are showing up.

Can someone please guide me as to what this issue could be and how to fix it ?   I keep occasionally getting the "error 9" messages that other people have received, but mainly I just see the 'activity monitor' sat there saying "Synchronizing with server" for hours on end and then it appears to stop.

The inbox currently has around 3.5k mails inside, but I have approx 7k I still need to *copy* into this mailbox from my old POP3 mailbox archive.

I have tried shutting down mail and deleting the .OfflineCache folder as per certain blog posts, but to no avail. I have also tried to offline/online the account as well as "enable/disable" the account from inside Mac Mail preferences.

Mac OS X v10.8.5

Mac Mail v6.6

Any help is very much appreciated.

***Post moved by the moderator to the appropriate forum category***

Outlook | MacOS | Legacy Outlook for Mac | For business

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-11-21T16:27:52+00:00

    It's increasingly apparent that Microsoft is either unwilling or incapable of fixing this problem.  GMAIL works fine and as expected.  Hotmail/Outlook does not.  

    Until such time that Microsoft corrects the problem, one may use Thunderbird client instead of Mac Mail provided that a modification to the CONFIG EDITOR is made.  One must change the following EXPUNGE command lines from FALSE to TRUE

    mail.imap.expunge_after_delete;true

    mail.imap.check_deleted_before_expunge;true

    These changes tells the Outlook servers that a message has been moved or deleted immediately upon such action.

    One caveat:  Thunderbird does not "play well" with Mac OS X Contacts.  It cannot add or append contacts directly to the OS X Contacts program.

    MICROSOFT...PLEASE...FIX YOUR IMAP CONNECTION ASAP!

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-10-25T21:04:12+00:00

    Hello

    I am experiencing the same problem. All my folders synchronize, exempt the inbox folder.

    Has there been found a solution?

    Thank you

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-10-21T17:22:44+00:00

    Hi Ron,

    Sorry for the delayed response.

    I don't have any other outlook.com accounts I am afraid so I can't answer that. However, I do have a gmail account and an iCloud account which are both IMAP and both work perfectly.

    The settings for this account were set up as per the instructions listed in my original post above.

    As for SMTP servers, I am a little confused why this would be relevant, as it was my inbox that was having the problem (in terms of receiving mail, not sending). The SMTP server was set to "imap-mail.outlook.com" as per the instructions listed above.

    There has been a development with regards to this issue however. It looks like my Mac client is now sync'ing ok after waiting for over 7 days for my POP3 mails to sync. The inbox is now receiving mail fine apart from occasional delays in mails coming through. However, I now have a problem with my iPad/iPhone devices with this same account. They can now no longer download any mail and keep complaining about not being able to login to the account.

    There is definitely some issue here but I cannot put my finger on it. For the time being my Mac client appears to be behaving (sort of) properly. It is now the iOS devices that are having difficulty logging into this account.

    Are there any troubleshooting steps that I can carry out to narrow this down?

    Are there any error logs at the server side that might give an idea as to what the problem might be?

    Many thanks for your help.

    Regards,

    Anthony

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-10-08T19:41:22+00:00

    Hi,

    I would like to ask the following for isolation and investigation purposes:

    • Do other Outlook.com accounts encounter the same issue when trying to set up IMAP client settings your computer?
    • Can you please let me know the settings
    • Also edit the outgoing servers list and change smtp.mac.com to smtp.me.com.

    Thanks,

    Ron - Senior Support Specialist

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  5. Anonymous
    2013-09-24T17:52:40+00:00

    Hi,

    Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community.

    I understand that you are having synhronization issue with Mac Mail to your Outlook.com and that you are getting an error message.

    You've mentioned that you followed the steps provided on the solution article but to no avail.

    I would like to inform you that I have escalated your concern to our Support Specialist. Please check this post from time to time for updates.

    We truly appreciate your patience and cooperation as we work through this process.

    Regards.

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