Re: IMAP tuning for Outlook 365

[Nikolai Lusan]

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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. 


- -- 
Nikolai Lusan 
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RE: IMAP tuning for Outlook 365

[Marc]

> 
> 
> 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. 

Re: IMAP tuning for Outlook 365

[Paul Kudla]

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 
1 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 
004-1009 Byron Street South
Whitby, Ontario - Canada
L1N 4S3

Toronto 416.642.7266
Main 1.866.411.7266
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Email p...@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


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