Sticky emails

[abconfused]

Hi. My current emails fail to load when I first launch my copy of Outlook. Send/Recieve has no effect and the only way I can bring in my emails is to move from Inbox to Sent, count three, return to Inbox. My current emails  start to flood in. Computer is i3 running Windows 10 and a copy of Outlook. Is there a setting somewhere I have missed? 

[gg30340]

Is your Outlook set up as an IMAP account or a POP3 account?

Have you just set up Outlook or has it been working OK for some time and the problem has this just started to happen?

How long have you waited before going through your "fix"?

How many emails are in your "Inbox"?

[abconfused]

Hi. Thank you so much for answering my call for help.

I offered to help a friend when the mechanical hard disk on his machine started to fail to start up. I cloned the disk onto a new SSD and all seemed to go well.

The emails were managed by a copy of Outlook 2019 and had given no trouble in the past. It was set up as an IMAP account. For some reason the Contact list was not attached to the data file so I made a direct copy, from the old disk, of this and copied it into the appropriate directory on the new disk. All good.

The startup delay become apparent so I searched for a solution. Done appeared to be available. I happened, by chance, to move to the "Sent" folder and back to the "Inbox" folder and new emails started to appear. I have used this "fix" since but quite often I have waited 10 to 15 minutes before I have resorted to this action.

I noted that the data file was larger than I had expected (15Gb) and I have cleared all deleted items and Archive the bulk of the emails. I now have just one years worth of emails (1.5Gb)

In frustration, I have installed an additional copy of this mailbox on my computer, in my office, with my copy of Outlook 2019 and I see the same frustrating delay. 

Any help would be much appreciated. Many thanks.     

[gg30340]

If there are a lot of emails and folders, and 1.5Gb of emails is a lot, it will take some time for Outlook to synchronise with the BT servers. I would open up Outlook do your "fix" then leave it overnight to see if everything has synched before doing or trying anything else. 

[abconfused]

Hi. I agree 1.5Gb is a large data file but outlook has coped well with a much larger file in the past.

We will leave Outlook running over night but we almost do this during the day. Once triggered, emails are added to the incoming list in synch with a Webmail view.

A further compilcation is that I have added a view of this mailbox to my copy of Outlook New and emails are displayed quickly without the need for the "fix". 

Perhaps our copies of Outlook 2019 are incompatible with BT's new email server?

Many thanks.

[gg30340 · Accepted solution]

What "new"  BTMail server are you referring to.  BTMail has been in existence since 2014 so if anything was incompatible it would have been found out long before now.

The BT servers use the standard IMAP protocol so I doubt there is any incompatibility problem, if there were I would have expected many complaints about it on this forum and there aren't.

I would be inclined to uninstall Outlook from the computer and run something like CCleaner to clear out any debris that gets missed. Rename your data file/profile so that it does not get used and then re install Outlook and allow it to do a clean synchronisation with the BT servers.

Assuming all the folders and emails are still on the BT server this should  put things back to where they were.

If there are emails held in the data file that you made I would get the "fresh" copy working first then move any email from the data file that you need into the "new" working Outlook.  

[abconfused]

Thank you for your reassurance that BTMail is an established and reliable email platform.

We regularly run Advanced System Care as a system cleaner and I ran it again and it found all the usual suspects.

Following your advice, I renamed my data file, restarted Outlook and initiated a clean synchronisation with the BT servers. My data was restored and synchronisation occurs, unprompted, after each shutdown and restart. Could all this have just been a corrupted data file? Thank you so much for your help and advise with this problem.

But, I now have no contacts or auto complete. Do I need to restore my original data file, export my contacts and import into my new data file? Or is there a quicker way?

Many thanks

[gg30340]

Yes it could have been caused by a corrupted file.

The auto complete will be rebuilt through your use of Outlook.

If the contacts are saved on the BTMail contacts file you could export them into Outlook.

Another option would be if you have the contacts on a different device using Outlook or another email client  you could  use the export contacts route and then import them into the "new" set up.

As a last resort you could search through your saved data file to find the contacts and import them but if there is corruption in the file you could end up back to square one.

[abconfused]

Hi. Success! We now have a fully working email platform with the original contact list attached. I was able to find an Export I had done of the contacts folder and have successfully restored that to the new copy of the mailbox.

Thank you so much for your continued help with this problem. 

It would have been good to have restored the original auto complete list but I am unable to find a solution that works. I use to backup to a NK2 file in the old days but this does not seem to apply anymore. The only advice on line that I can find involves MFCMAPI.exe and I can't make that work. I will continue to try.

[gg30340]

That's good to hear that your perseverance has paid off and you managed to get it up and working again.