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EAS doesn't sync with Outlook 2013 in time
Problem reported by WebControl GmbH - 9/26/2014 at 2:11 AM
Submitted
One of our customers uses an EAS account connected to Outlook 2013 (SmarterMail Enterprise Edition, Version 12.3.5318). He reports that it takes a long time (over 30 minutes) for mails being synced to Outlook, while there is no noteworthy delay on mobile clients.
According to the FAQ this seems to be a problem on Microsofts side, but maybe there's a workaround by SmarterTools or a fix by MS in prospective? Our customer doesn't care whose fault this situation is, he just wants a solution.
 
By the way: Is there still a feedback / bug report form on the ST website? The old one seems to be gone with the new site and there seems to be no replacement.

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Steve Reid Replied
I believe this community is the new method to report.
 
I am using the same setup with no delays at all.
 
Maybe he should blow out his outlook install and start from scratch?
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Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
I also use Outlook 2013 and EAS on a Surface Pro 3.  There are certain scenarios where I experience similar issues.
 
Unfortunately, all of them are related to quirks in Outlook 2013.
 
For example, when a computer goes into sleep or hibernation and then wakes up, Outlook does not re-establish the connection with the server.  If you hit the Send/Receive Email, everything will work again.
 
We have have also seen Firewalls setup to drop connections after X amount of time.  Where phones are really good at re-establishing a connection, Outlook is not.  Again, if you hit Send/Receive Email it starts working again.
 
When Outlook does its initial pull of all emails from the server using EAS, Outlook does not do a good job handling work that a user is doing at the same time. For example, if I pull down my entire mailbox which was the DEFAULT setting for Outlook 2013 and EAS (which is INSANE) because my mailbox is MANY GIGS... If I delete a new email that comes in or move messages in a folder that had already synced but other folders are still syncing... Outlook may or may not actually send these commands to the server when it has free time or finishes with the initial sync.  It is as if Outlook forgets about the queue of work that the user has done.  Unless Outlook communicates the requests to delete or move these emails, we can't do anything about it.  Anyway, we really encourage customers on initial syncs to leave their computer alone until its done.  
 
My guess is, your user can hit Send/Receive Email and it will work again?  If so, then you know its a connection being dropped for one reason or another and Outlook isn't good about fixing it.
 
One solution could be is that your customer could simply change his power savings mode while plugged in to not Sleep the computer.  That could help a TON!  He should look at his connection and make sure its not going in and out.
 
There are other things to look at, these are just the more common and things that I have specifically ran into or helped people with.  You can always open a support ticket and we can take a look at your server and logs.  We can give you a better idea if Outlook isn't connecting or no longer has a connection to the server etc.
 
Hope this helps,
 
Tim
 
 
 
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. (877) 357-6278 www.smartertools.com
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Dennis A. Replied
Hello Tim,

One of my customers has the EXACT same problem as you describe, where it seems that Outlook does not send the commands to the server. Also, my server reports some ActiveSync errors: System.IndexOutOfRangeException: Array index is out of range. Her mailbox is also pretty large (about 5 gigs).

Your colleague was able to reproduce the problem - my ticket is available under no. [2ED-1BB57177-0A88].

Hope that the problem will be fixed soon, probably by some cooperation with Microsoft. Problem has been there for some months now!
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WebControl GmbH Replied
Thank you very much for the information!
 
I have forwarded them to our customer, so let's see how his response will look like.
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Jason N. Replied
Also, if they have third party plugins to Outlook 2013, eg AVG mail scanner, it will cause long delays for the email to appear in their Inbox if the mailbox is large.  Majority of my customers who use EAS doesn't seem to have a problem with Outlook 2013 besides the normal glitches, but third party add-ons and especially anti-virus email scanning plugins, will cause these type of delays, and it's not just with EAS, but IMAP as well.

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