Outlook inbox not auto-updating

Kenny Stern 51 Reputation points
2021-09-24T18:02:59.763+00:00

Recently a number of users in our firm are reporting delays with their inbox not updating in a timely fashion. Emails will hit their mobile devices but then take up to a half hour to appear in Outlook. Some users are having to restart Outlook to get their inbox updated or having to hit Update Folder. Issue seems to be with Outlook specifically and happens in online mode as well so does not appear related to OST sync.
We are using Outlook for Office 365 with Exchange online.
This seems to be an issue with Exchange online but haven't seen any notifications about it from Microsoft.

Is anyone else seeing this and is there a fix for it?

Thanks

Outlook Management
Outlook Management
Outlook: A family of Microsoft email and calendar products.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
4,913 questions
Microsoft Exchange Online Management
Microsoft Exchange Online Management
Microsoft Exchange Online: A Microsoft email and calendaring hosted service.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
4,212 questions
Exchange Server Management
Exchange Server Management
Exchange Server: A family of Microsoft client/server messaging and collaboration software.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
7,368 questions

5 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Michael Fisher 21 Reputation points
    2021-10-13T19:08:50.243+00:00

    We have confirmed with our escalation engineer that Microsoft has had Service Degradation incident #EX285928 open for the past two weeks, and that it is still being actively worked. Not all tenants are affected, and not all mailboxes in all tenants are affected. If your tenant is affected, contact support and get your tenant scoped into the incident -- you'll begin receiving service health dashboard updates on the issue and also get prioritized for rollout once the fix is ready. Good luck all.

    4 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Philip nicoles 371 Reputation points
    2021-09-28T06:18:12.297+00:00

    Sometimes emails don’t get downloaded automatically in MS Outlook. It does not perform send/ receive operation automatically to download emails from the server. So it really becomes difficult, When Outlook doesn’t update automatically. I faced this issue with Outlook 2016.This behavior of Outlook occurs because of a damaged Send / Receive group within Outlook. For this problem, you required to create a new send / receive group in Outlook.

    below are the steps I used to fix Outlook not updating automatically issue:

    • First I open Outlook and go to File- Options- Advanced- Send/Receive
    • Than I Create a new send / receive group in Outlook or click All Accounts group, then click Copy
    • Type the new group name under Send/Receive Group Name, then click OK
    • You should Enable both of this options:
    Include this group in send/receive.
    Schedule an automatic send/receive every X (you can choose time according to you) minutes.

    • than I restart Outlook and I found problem resolved.

    I hope this solution will help you and if not please let me know.

    1 person found this answer helpful.
  3. Jade Liang-MSFT 9,956 Reputation points Microsoft Employee
    2021-09-27T06:59:12.72+00:00

    Hi @Kenny Stern ,

    What's the specific version of your Outlook client(File>Office account>About Outlook)? Please first ensure that you have updated to the latest version of Outlook client.

    I understand the issue occurred on any specific users only recently, are there any similarities on them(such as the network, client version or install any third-party add-ins or programs)? And have you performed any special operations before it?

    In order to further confirm if the issue is related to the network, it's recommended to switch to other network or log the mailbox into other mail client(such as "windows mail") to check.

    If the issue occurred on Outlook desktop client only, it's recommended to first troubleshoot it in the point of Outlook. In order to avoid the interference of other third-party programs, please try to close other programs and restart Outlook in safe mode to check if the issue has any differences(windows+R>type "Outlook.exe /safe">enter).

    If your issue has any update, please feel free to post back.

    If the response is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
    Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

  4. Michael Fisher 21 Reputation points
    2021-10-13T13:18:27.123+00:00

    See also: https://reddit.com/r/Office365/comments/q2l1c2/outlook_365_not_updating/ -- this all looks a lot like an unacknowledged issue.

    0 comments
  5. Josh Dunaway 1 Reputation point
    2022-01-28T21:42:45.34+00:00

    I believe for certain this an issue with auto-mapping.

    Remove mailbox permissions in EXO and re-add it as such:

    add-mailboxpermission -Identity tom@Company portal .com -User angela@Company portal .com -AccessRights fullaccess -AutoMapping:$false

    then add the account in control panel > mail > new

    If its a shared mailbox, select Manual Configration, type in the shared address (after -Identity), but when prompted for credentials, use the address & password of the user who just had permissions re-added (the -User) without Automapping.

    Has worked every time so far - allow for time for it to resolve itself. Disabling Exchange Cached mode on the shared mailbox (only) has also been helpful and we haven't yet noticed a considerable performance loss from Outlook this way.

    0 comments