IMAP tuning for Outlook 365
Hello,
I'm looking for advices on IMAP config tuning for best user experience with Outlook 365. I'm currently using dovecot 2.3.4.1 (f79e8e7e4) provided with Debian 10. One of my users has Outlook 365 and an IMAP mailbox of large size with several folders (more than 3GB). From time to time as his main inbox folder is growing he can see some problems with its Outlook application. Sometimes it freezes during mailbox synchronisation, sometimes he can't see new incoming emails.
I wonder if there is some specific workarounds for an up-to-date Outlook in Dovecot or if you can suggests some config setup adjustments (timeouts, idleing ...) to avoid problems in his Outlook. Most of the config are defaults. But I can provide relevant parts of the config if needed.
I have this workaround activated for a long time: imap_client_workarounds = delay-newmail
By the way, I also have a big IMAP mailbox. Can't see any server specific problem while connecting with Thunderbird to this Dovecot server.
-- Best regards, Artur
Ok sorry to NOT have an answer you are looking for but I don't want anyone wasting their time on what is clearly a microsoft issue.
Outlook 365 / Outlook since 2010 simply does not support imap.
You can tweek it here and there however here are the basic's
Outlook IMAP does not support IDLE thus no auto upating of the inbox and other folder changes etc...
Outlook (this if from experience) simply does not handle large anything folders well, especially imap - hence the click at the bottom of a folder to see more (ie history) ??
I had a customer spending 700+ / mth to telus because people were leaving emails behind (out of sight out of mind)
yes that was per month !
that being said the best you can do with outlook is set to auto update the send/receive settings to every 5 minutes or so
A 3G email box is an issue no matter what as the size is the direct issue of the lockups, and/or the quantity of emails in the folder
Outlook seems to work ok until about 200 emails (max 1000) in a folder and maybe 1G of actual data.
Yes you can move emails to other folders, but the folder will still try to sync in the background and will eventually lock up pending the size.
I use thunderbird and although it has its short commings, it handles large email boxes extremely well, handles IMAP IDLE protocol
other imap clients (apple ios mail - iphone, windows mail - the free one (suprised me) )
I am running 26G of email, 150+ folders etc etc (some folders aproach 10000 emails - archived stuff) and no real issues on a replicated dovecot 2.3.19 server setup.
What needs to be kept in mind is that Microsoft (espically 365) is trying to push exchange protcol and has all but dropped support for IMAP.
Again open to comments but i recently was forced to use Outlook (Office 365) for a customer and ran into all of these issues yet again, i am weeding them off of Outlook in favor of thunderbird.
FYI
Happy Tuesday !!! Thanks - paul
Paul Kudla
Scom.ca Internet Services <http://www.scom.ca> 004-1009 Byron Street South Whitby, Ontario - Canada L1N 4S3
Toronto 416.642.7266 Main 1.866.411.7266 Fax 1.888.892.7266 Email paul@scom.ca
On 1/31/2023 10:07 AM, Artur Pydo wrote:
Hello,
I'm looking for advices on IMAP config tuning for best user experience with Outlook 365. I'm currently using dovecot 2.3.4.1 (f79e8e7e4) provided with Debian 10. One of my users has Outlook 365 and an IMAP mailbox of large size with several folders (more than 3GB). From time to time as his main inbox folder is growing he can see some problems with its Outlook application. Sometimes it freezes during mailbox synchronisation, sometimes he can't see new incoming emails.
I wonder if there is some specific workarounds for an up-to-date Outlook in Dovecot or if you can suggests some config setup adjustments (timeouts, idleing ...) to avoid problems in his Outlook. Most of the config are defaults. But I can provide relevant parts of the config if needed.
I have this workaround activated for a long time: imap_client_workarounds = delay-newmail
By the way, I also have a big IMAP mailbox. Can't see any server specific problem while connecting with Thunderbird to this Dovecot server.
-- Best regards, Artur
-- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by *MailScanner* <http://www.mailscanner.info/>, and is believed to be clean.
Outlook (this if from experience) simply does not handle large anything folders well, especially imap - hence the click at the bottom of a folder to see more (ie history) ??
I don't think this is limited to imap, also in an exchange environment you have this 'click'. It is super annoying. I have been asking (more like complaining) a lot about such issues. And the ms morons are only giving me conflicting workarounds.
I have been losing emails also in this setup, and the way to solve that, was creating a new profile. But at that time I already lost countless of mails. Found even an old thread about this on outlook, just never fixed by them. The development of outlook is flawed in so many ways. I asked them if they do not consider developing this product seriously, maybe they should make it open-source so others can fix things. Shortly after that my account at ms was cancelled (without any notification / warning or whatsoever)
I had a customer spending 700+ / mth to telus because people were leaving emails behind (out of sight out of mind)
I am currently running the exchange setup disconnected from the internet. If you leave it wide open, you get what happened at Rackspace.
that being said the best you can do with outlook is set to auto update the send/receive settings to every 5 minutes or so
A 3G email box is an issue no matter what as the size is the direct issue of the lockups, and/or the quantity of emails in the folder
Outlook seems to work ok until about 200 emails (max 1000) in a folder and maybe 1G of actual data.
What needs to be kept in mind is that Microsoft (espically 365) is trying to push exchange protcol and has all but dropped support for IMAP.
Indeed everyone needs to be pushed to their cloud, that is always what needs to be at the back of your mind when you decide to use this. Although I can't believe that the exchange environment in their cloud is anywhere near similar to the exchange on premises. The latter is such a buggy setup, I stopped offering it to clients.
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Hi,
On Tue, 2023-01-31 at 11:14 -0500, Paul Kudla wrote:
Ok sorry to NOT have an answer you are looking for but I don't want anyone wasting their time on what is clearly a microsoft issue.
Outlook 365 / Outlook since 2010 simply does not support imap.
I can second this. I personally don't use Windows, or MacOS, but have had to support it on desktops for other people. I found that from time to time Outlook would not exit properly (hence people not seeing new incoming email) requiring either a restart of the machine, or using the system utils to manually kill the background processes that exit cleanly. I do think that Outlook is not the best email client in any given environment.
My solution was to find another email client - I don't like thunderbird, there is Canary, but if you want the closest drop-in replacement for Outlook on a Windows desktop there is "eM Client" ... there is a port of Evolution (my preferred client) for Windows, but I'm not so sure about the sources I have found for it - the MacOS ports of Evolution are reputable, and I would recommend that.
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participants (4)
-
Artur Pydo
-
Marc
-
Nikolai Lusan
-
Paul Kudla