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Jason Clishe's avatar
Jason Clishe
Copper Contributor
Mar 09, 2020

Outlook for Mac sync issues

I've been having a strange, sporadic issue for the past several months. I'm using macOS Catalina and Outlook 16.35.

 

Outlook sends and receives new mail just fine. But read/unread state, and moves/deletes don't get synced back to O365. For example I could be working on my MacBook for several hours. During that time I'm sending, receiving, moving, and deleting email with no apparent issues. New mail is coming in and mail that I'm composing is sending, and Outlook isn't notifying me of any sync errors.

 

But then later I'll check email from another device or from my phone, and all of the mail that I've already cleared out of my inbox on my MacBook is still appearing as unread and sitting in my Inbox on every other device. Restarting Outlook on my MacBook doesn't fix it, but usually if I reboot my MacBook entirely and then restart Outlook on it, Outlook will finally sync everything.

 

Any idea what could be the issue here? Is there a local cache I can flush?

  • Parth_sarvaiya's avatar
    Parth_sarvaiya
    Copper Contributor

    Hi Jason Clishe, I faced a similar issue where outlook would stop syncing indefinitely.  while going through many methods, I just toggled the "New outlook" button and switched back to the old outlook look and it started syncing again. Not sure how helpful this would be, however, let me know in case it works for you as well.

  • Mahhus's avatar
    Mahhus
    Copper Contributor

    HiJason Clishe 

    This is one of the most outlook common issue, so please try following technical steps:

     

    please let me know if you have further question, i will be gald to help 🙂

     

  • Mahhus's avatar
    Mahhus
    Copper Contributor

    HelloJason Clishe 

     

    Please provide me your Feedback regarding my answer 🙂

     

    Best Regards, 

    Mahhus

    • ophion's avatar
      ophion
      Copper Contributor

      I have the exact same behaviour, did all the steps you mentioned, but it doesn't get better.

      Sometimes a new mail comes in immediately, but usually they're delayed by up to 20 minutes.

      When I go to offline mode and back to online, it syncs most of the times, but sometimes I need to do that several times, before it syncs at all.

      Connection state usually shows "connected to <mailbox>", sometimes last sync is current, sometimes it's not, but the state clearly isnt synced.

       

      Any other ideas?

  • sammond7's avatar
    sammond7
    Copper Contributor
    Same issue here and having to recreate an entire profile with 6 email addresses, signatures etc is simply not a feasible solution for this to happen more than once. Unfortunately the simple workarounds haven't worked for me. Has anyone got any new advice with the latest Outlook for Mac 16.52?
    • sammond7's avatar
      sammond7
      Copper Contributor

      Just had a Chat with support and this was their advice. It's worked for now, will see how it behaves over the next week:

       

      Please remove the account from New Outlook and add the account via Direct Sync method.
      1. Navigate to Outlook menu bar at the top of the screen
      2. Click on "Tools" -- "Accounts"
      3. Click on the "+" sign
      4. Type in the email address and click on "Continue"
      5. Click on the "Not (Google/Yahoo/iCloud/IMAP)?" on the top right of the next window which appears
      6. Toggle the switch next to "Sync with Microsoft Cloud", so it turns to gray from blue
      7. After which, select "Google"
      8. Type in your password for the email account
      9. Click on "Add Account"

      • latourselena's avatar
        latourselena
        Copper Contributor

        sammond7  I am having the same issue. It is a syncing issue. I manually ran the sync for my calendar and then the information populated correctly.  Because I manage projects and meetings is my thing... my exchange was added to the iCloud mail... that syncs better than outlook. 

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