Outlook 2013 IMAP Sync Issues

[Richard Flack]

Humble apologies if this dups other thread(s) - please redirect me. Im new here ...

Actually I have several questions about Outlook 2013 but Ill break them down. This concerns sync issues.
I'm somewhat mystified by how this works. I should explain that I have a moderate sized email file (current ost file is around 3.7 GB with a moderate number of folders & subfolders, max depth 3 - I think!)

It seems like it will not sync an entire folder in one go, but breaks it into chinks in some manner of its own devising.

Observed behaviour:
- with a new ost file, syncing seems to go in short bursts ... if you click on a different folder it starts syncing that folder and 1 - 200 msgs arrive, then it stalls. to get the entire email database downloaded required much clicking and reclicking of folders. why does it not just chug away to sync the entire mail file?
- after syncing some messages show size as 0 yet the message is ostensibly complete
- left Outlook open overnight, the Inbox message count went up by a couple of thousand but its not obvious what messages were added (ie they are not recent, nor prior to the previous earliest message - the inbox was previously pruned to post Jul 1 2012) - assuming they are not spurious, why were they not properly synced before (sync had supposedly ended ok earlier on)

 

[larry]

- with a new ost file, syncing seems to go in short bursts ... if you click on a different folder it starts syncing that folder and 1 - 200 msgs arrive, then it stalls. to get the entire email database downloaded required much clicking and reclicking of folders. why does it not just chug away to sync the entire mail file?

I understand this is by design so that you can send mail and check for new mail while its downloading old mail. It's supposed to stall then start back up on its own if you leave it alone.

- after syncing some messages show size as 0 yet the message is ostensibly complete

This usually means the message is corrupt. I'll leave it to someone else to guess at why.

- left Outlook open overnight, the Inbox message count went up by a couple of thousand but its not obvious what messages were added (ie they are not recent, nor prior to the previous earliest message - the inbox was previously pruned to post Jul 1 2012) - assuming they are not spurious, why were they not properly synced before (sync had supposedly ended ok earlier on)

Older versions downloaded new, unread messages then went for the oldest.