"New Outlook" preview inbox doesn't refresh

Anonymous
2023-03-29T11:58:46+00:00

I've been using the new Outlook preview (the one you enable by toggling the "Try the new Outlook" switch in the main Outlook app for Windows) and I love it. It's so much faster than the main version.

Unfortunately, a few weeks ago I noticed that the inbox had stopped updating automatically. I still get notifications that new messages have arrived, and the icon in the task bar indicates that I have unread messages, but when I look at the Outlook window the inbox shows no new messages. I have to click on a different folder and back to the inbox for it to refresh and show the new emails.

Obviously this make the product basically unusable - I can't afford to risk missing important emails - so I keep switching back to the main Outlook app, each time giving feedback about the problem. Every week or so I switch back to the new Outlook in the hope that the issue has been fixed, but so far it hasn't.

This seems like such a fundamental problem that I can't believe it hasn't been fixed, which makes me wonder whether I'm alone in having this issue. I'm using a work account with Outlook and, to be clear, I don't experience the same issue when I'm using the main Outlook app.

Is anybody else having this problem? Is there anything I can do to fix it or is it a problem with the app itself?

Outlook | Windows | Classic Outlook for Windows | For home

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-09-07T14:16:46+00:00

    Microsoft's development of a windows email client has been abysmal to put it mildly. Like the rest of you. I'm plagued with this problem as well. At least clicking on another email folder (if you have one), then back to the original brings those emails up. What I believe is worse is that the new outlook doesn't update the email's read/unread status on the mail server. So, each time you get mail, the unread items in your inbox grows and grows. The only way to update the read status is to either go back to the old windows mail where it works, or go to the webmail of the email provider, and "read" them there. I have 3 email boxes with different email servers, so that gets old real fast. Why does MS have so much difficulty with email? You know what DID work well, "back in the day?" Windows Live Mail which was basically Outlook Lite.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-08-18T16:56:22+00:00

    Same problem. The refresh seems to happen sporadically once or twice a day but unreliably.

    Hoping for a fix soon.

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-08-11T15:41:22+00:00

    You have better luck than I. My Outlook preview version just spins and never goes farther than "signing you in"

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-08-09T05:53:02+00:00

    August 2023 and I'm encountering this problem the same day as having first tried the New Outlook. Is there a resolution for this issue yet?

    FWIW I am also having this issue so you are not alone.

    It started a week or two ago.

    Any new emails received are not shown in the Inbox until you change folder and change back e.g. Inbox -> sent -> Inbox

    so at a glance you cannot be confident that there are no new emails or just that it has not refreshed.

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-06-29T15:00:34+00:00

    Ugh, another tragic miss/fail! Like many other users, I was disappointed to learn that Microsoft's developers failed to include any way to create a "combined/linked inbox" for viewing all new messages from various accounts/addresses in one place.

    Now I learn from the original post in this thread that there's not even a way to get (whether automatically or manually refreshing/sync'ing) those new messages, and that I'll be receiving notifications for messages that aren't appearing?!@#$%&?! If that's truly the case, I was going to see if I could function without the "combined" item for a short time ... but if it turns out I'm also not receiving new messages, I'll "un-toggle" in a hurry since there are crucial new messages for bills and personal-business-clients/projects I absolutely cannot afford to miss ... yikes! :(

    UPDATE: I just received a test message that I sent to all of my accounts, both as a notification and in my inboxes (as well as my phone's inboxes), so perhaps this has been resolved (although I see no indication of that in the thread) ... ?

    If so, then hopefully they'll also fix the "combined" issue, since that appears to still be a gap.

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