Re: Outlook 2016 & IMAP Trouble with dovecot
On 03/05/2018 05:40 PM, John Woods wrote:
George,
We run Dovecot with Outlook, and have had similar problems when Outlook is operating in "Offline Mode". When you're in offline mode, doing any folder-level operations, such as Copy, Create, Rename, Move, Delete, etc. causes problems with the mailbox. The end result is that you could lose e-mails and entire folders that were involved in the offline operation.
How we have fixed this in the past, what we have done is:
- Do an Outlook "export" of the entire contents of the IMAP account into a ".pst" file. (This saves the e-mails that may be at-risk of being lost.)
- Delete the IMAP account in Outlook, which includes the ".ost" file.
- Delete the IMAP account on the Dovecot server
- Reconfigure the IMAP account in Outlook
- Restore the IMAP contents from the ".pst" file in step #1.
- Educate the user about not doing folder-level operations while in offline mode.
Hope this helps...
Thanks, John
Thanks,
that means that outlook is useless as an Imap client then . This is the whole idea behind imap, to be able to do work while off-line and sync changes when on-line or I get it wrong ?
thanks anyway
George
Thanks,
that means that outlook is useless as an Imap client then . This is the whole idea behind imap, to be able to do work while off-line and sync changes when on-line or I get it wrong ?
thanks anyway
I would see it a bit more general: Outlook is mostly useless as email client in general (not looking at the groupware functionality). Even with Exchange or other server types, many simple things do not work reliably and never get fixed. And the simplest things are impossible, e.g. displaying the full email address of a sender instead of the name only (to make it harder to spoof senders). I suspect 2016 is the 2nd-last version of Outlook to be released and from then on it will be browser-only. That said, IMAP support is "strange" and has always been - OL trusts its own .ps ort .ost file more than the server which circumvents the general idea of IMAP. If you need Outlook, avoid IMAP and if you need IMAP, avoid Outlook....
JC
On Tue, 6 Mar 2018 10:22:36 +0100, Jakob Curdes stated:
Thanks,
that means that outlook is useless as an Imap client then . This is the whole idea behind imap, to be able to do work while off-line and sync changes when on-line or I get it wrong ?
thanks anyway
I would see it a bit more general: Outlook is mostly useless as email client in general (not looking at the groupware functionality). Even with Exchange or other server types, many simple things do not work reliably and never get fixed. And the simplest things are impossible, e.g. displaying the full email address of a sender instead of the name only (to make it harder to spoof senders). I suspect 2016 is the 2nd-last version of Outlook to be released and from then on it will be browser-only. That said, IMAP support is "strange" and has always been - OL trusts its own .ps ort .ost file more than the server which circumvents the general idea of IMAP. If you need Outlook, avoid IMAP and if you need IMAP, avoid Outlook....
JC
What version of Outlook are you using? I have "2016 (16.0.9029.2016) 32-bit installed and it does not exhibit the problems that you allege it does?
Have you ever tried any of the MS Forums?
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_outlook http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/outlook
There are others of course, and I have had good success in the past getting answers. In my experience, the source of the problem is usually PEBKAC.
-- Jerry
I would see it a bit more general: Outlook is mostly useless as email client in general (not looking at the groupware functionality). Even with Exchange or other server types, many simple things do not work reliably and never get fixed. And the simplest things are impossible, e.g. displaying the full email address of a sender instead of the name only (to make it harder to spoof senders). I suspect 2016 is the 2nd-last version of Outlook to be released and from then on it will be browser-only. That said, IMAP support is "strange" and has always been - OL trusts its own .ps ort .ost file more than the server which circumvents the general idea of IMAP. If you need Outlook, avoid IMAP and if you need IMAP, avoid Outlook....
JC What version of Outlook are you using? I have "2016 (16.0.9029.2016) 32-bit installed and it does not exhibit the problems that you allege it does?
Have you ever tried any of the MS Forums? Yes, I have and my customer uses Outlook 2016, current version. Without deviating too much from the topic of this list, I can/must affirm that the current OL is not a very good IMAP client. Also, if you have a way to get the email address displayed by default, I and many others would appreciate to hear how. I think discussing the other pros and cons of Outlook is a bit off-topic for this list, but rest assured that during a larger migration project I have found many problems that others also had and that have not been addressed.
JC
On 03/06/2018 01:51 PM, Jerry wrote:
George,
We run Dovecot with Outlook, and have had similar problems when Outlook is operating in "Offline Mode". When you're in offline mode, doing any folder-level operations, such as Copy, Create, Rename, Move, Delete, etc. causes problems with the mailbox. The end result is that you could lose e-mails and entire folders that were involved in the offline operation.
How we have fixed this in the past, what we have done is:
- Do an Outlook "export" of the entire contents of the IMAP account into a ".pst" file. (This saves the e-mails that may be at-risk of being lost.)
- Delete the IMAP account in Outlook, which includes the ".ost" file.
- Delete the IMAP account on the Dovecot server
- Reconfigure the IMAP account in Outlook
- Restore the IMAP contents from the ".pst" file in step #1.
- Educate the user about not doing folder-level operations while in offline mode.
Hope this helps...
Thanks, John
I did as you state above with a little variation and it works thanks for the hint. My changed sequence is (for anyone with same trouble) :
Export the mails into a pst (while off-line) . Don't be alarmed if you DON'T see some of your messages in the pst afterwards it's another bug we have to thank MS for, you have to change the default view to IMAP on some folders to see the emails (go figure why you have to do so in a pst...)
Delete the ost used by the account (or rename it if you wish, just to be sure) .
Let outlook refetch all messages from the server again ( to be sure I counted the size of the users maildir on the folder and waited for the ost to come close and report no more downloading, close one or two times outlook to be sure).
Import the previous pst back into outlook with the no duplicates option .
After that the mailbox was in sync with no mail missing. I just hope that was a one time glitch but to be sure I instructed the user to be cautious while working from home and report if he sees signs of not syncing . I'm not confident though that it will not happen again .
On Tue, 6 Mar 2018 10:22:36 +0100, Jakob Curdes stated:
Thanks,
that means that outlook is useless as an Imap client then . This is the whole idea behind imap, to be able to do work while off-line and sync changes when on-line or I get it wrong ?
thanks anyway I would see it a bit more general: Outlook is mostly useless as email client in general (not looking at the groupware functionality). Even with Exchange or other server types, many simple things do not work reliably and never get fixed. And the simplest things are impossible, e.g. displaying the full email address of a sender instead of the name only (to make it harder to spoof senders). I suspect 2016 is the 2nd-last version of Outlook to be released and from then on it will be browser-only. That said, IMAP support is "strange" and has always been - OL trusts its own .ps ort .ost file more than the server which circumvents the general idea of IMAP. If you need Outlook, avoid IMAP and if you need IMAP, avoid Outlook....
JC What version of Outlook are you using? I have "2016 (16.0.9029.2016) 32-bit installed and it does not exhibit the problems that you allege it does?
mine Is a fresh o365 subscription without exchange. The user is allowed to install on his laptop to work at home.
Have you ever tried any of the MS Forums?
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_outlook http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/outlook
I think the forums you describe above is mostly a waste of time. You cannot find much of useful info on them (that's me personal opinion of course but ... )
There are others of course, and I have had good success in the past getting answers. In my experience, the source of the problem is usually PEBKAC.
PEBKAC might be but Outlook MUST behave as an email client , otherwise drop support for IMAP and POP3 and state that it's only for exchange (but this way they will loose $$$ i guess).
Sorry for the long reply
George
participants (3)
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G A
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Jakob Curdes
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Jerry