New Outlook issues with Gmail, particularly labels/folders

[crawfish]

Operating system::    Windows 11 25H2
Outlook version:     New Outlook
Email type or host:    Gmail/IMAP

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I've tried using Gmail filters to replace the rules I used in Classic Outlook to apply labels to incoming email, the intent being to move them into folders upon retrieval in New Outlook that mimic what I had in Classic Outlook. This works, but there are issues in New Outlook. I'm using the version I downloaded from the store yesterday, New Outlook 1.2025.1111.100. I was using POP in Classic Outlook, and I'm now using IMAP in New Outlook.

1. Mail counters on the New Outlook folders don't appear until I enter the folders, and it takes a couple seconds to populate with the new mail. This is not great. The counters do appear immediately in Gmail, both on its folders (labels) and Inbox.
2. New Outlook lacks Classic's "Unread Mail" Search View, so in New, I have to view new mail in the Inbox proper, where the mail counter works as expected.
3. Removing read mail I want to keep from the Inbox can only be done by moving it into another folder or Archiving it. Well, the purpose of the filter is to move it into folders automatically, so that leaves Archiving. Archiving works fine when done in Gmail; it simply removes the Inbox label, and the mail disappears from Gmail's Inbox, while the other label lives on. However, Archiving in New Outlook may or may not create a second copy of the mail in its Archive folder, depending on whether I've viewed it in the target folder for the Gmail filter. Bizarrely, if I do view the folder and see the mail there before Archiving from Inbox, the mail will appear in Archive and disappear within a second or two. If I don't view the folder first, the copy in Archive will be persistent, so there are now two distinct copies of the mail, with the one in Archive not represented in Gmail, not even under its "All Mail" label. There really are two copies in new Outlook, as I can delete them from both New Outlook's target folder and Archive, and both show up in its Deleted Items.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? I simply can't use New Outlook as the client for Gmail with these sorts of inconsistent behaviors going on.

Also, New Outlook doesn't give me feedback when mail is being retrieved on its indeterminate schedule, not even when I manually sync, and it's slow. I press F9, and then I have to twiddle my thumbs for 10 seconds while nothing appears to be happening.

 

[Hornblower409]

2. New Outlook lacks Classic's "Unread Mail" Search View, so in New, I have to view new mail in the Inbox proper, where the mail counter works as expected.

For a folder view

For all folders in the account, in the main Search Bar

Or am I missing the point entirely?

 

[Diane Poremsky]

>>
Also, New Outlook doesn't give me feedback when mail is being retrieved on its indeterminate schedule, not even when I manually sync, and it's slow. I press F9, and then I have to twiddle my thumbs for 10 seconds while nothing appears to be happening.
>>

This is because new Outlook doesn't check mail - it tells the Microsoft cloud to check for mail.


Search folders are only for Microsoft Exchange accounts, not Gmail. You can use the Unread filter or mailbox search (per your follow-up)

On the duplicates (item #3) - some of this is just how google is with IMAP. I don't have a solution offhand but will test it.

 

[crawfish]

Thanks for the replies. I've since settled on a solution that avoids the weirdness but unfortunately precludes my testing the "Unread" filter, which I totally missed. I originally started using Outlook 20+ years ago because I had multiple email accounts I used via POP, sorting them into multiple folders based on account and so forth. Now I have just the one email I regularly use, so I've gone to Gmail as my email program both on the desktop and on mobile. Once a month, I archive my saved messages from their Gmail labels to Outlook Classic folders in my old .pst file, which I use when I need to search my email history. This is working very nicely, and I finally have a single consistent view of my email on all my devices. (I had previously used POP and configured to leave on server, so I had to delete from both Gmail and Outlook, which was mildly annoying.)

As I'm no longer leaving Outlook open at all times, I've also moved to the Gmail calendar/event system. The only glitch I've run into there is that desktop notifications don't fire when the computer is locked overnight, despite me leaving the tab open in Edge and other browsers, making sure the tab isn't sleeping, the Notification system isn't in "Do Not Disturb", etc. My computer is on 24/7 and is not sleeping or hibernating. However, I do still get them on my iPhone, so I guess that will be good enough. The notifications do fire on my PC at all other times.

I think it's a pretty sweet setup and much better than I was expecting. I use vertical tabs in Edge and have pinned these two web sites to the top left, so it looks like this; there's even a new mail counter on Gmail: