Outlook 2007 hangs with IMAP

[Proprioceptive]

So, I've used outlook for a long time and have used POP3 to download e-mail, but I've recently switched to IMAP via my school and Gmail. Also, my army account only offers IMAP integration, so I have to use IMAP with that account. Ever since I've set up IMAP accounts in outlook, when I close outlook, I can't get it to start up again. I notice that "outlook.exe" is still running as a prcoess in the task manager after I close it (this never happened before IMAP), and every attempt to start it up creates a new running task but no actual start up. I have to kill the process manually every time I close outlook if I want it to start next time... any clues? I've searched the net and can't seem to find a fix!

 

[MedicBob]

Do you have Outlook set to minimize into the task bar on the right side? Look there for the Outlook icon if it is there Outlook is still running, just double click and it opens.

 

[Proprioceptive]

Nope. This was definitely something I checked for. I set up my accounts via IMAP and it started doing this, then I set them up as POP3 and no problem... I just can't figure out what the heck is going on.

 

[Nothinman]

How long have you waited for it to quit? I've noticed that Outlook 2007 takes longer to finish up doing whatever it does when you close it. I'm not using IMAP here but it still takes like 30s to disappear from the process list.

 

[Proprioceptive]

Nope... I can be hours.

 

[mooseracing]

Don't kill the process manually, you WILL corrupt that Outlook profile and mailbox, this is a 07 thing.

Try starting Outlook from the run window in Outlook safe mode: Outlook /safe

If that doesn't work I would create a new Profile in Outlook and try again.

 

[Proprioceptive]

Originally posted by: mooseracing
Don't kill the process manually, you WILL corrupt that Outlook profile and mailbox, this is a 07 thing.

Try starting Outlook from the run window in Outlook safe mode: Outlook /safe

If that doesn't work I would create a new Profile in Outlook and try again.

Hate to say, but these are all options I've tried. I can certainly get it closed and restarted with various methods but it becomes tedious and annoying to have to manually do this every time. I've given up and gone to POP. I just can't seem to find anyone who knows how to solve this issue... 😕

 

[GeekDrew]

What kind of internet connection does this PC have? I've seen problems like that before, but that was on a failure-prone wireless network... Outlook did not *at all* like losing the connection to the IMAP server.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Another thing about IMAP....

IMAP has been a loosely programmed protocol over the last 10 years. Some clients work better than others. Most of the transmission stuff works the same, but if your client/server communication is getting hung up in the gray areas it may be worth trying your luck with another client just to see if you get better results. I use Mozilla Thunderbird as my primary IMAP client because it's lightweight and free.

If that's not an acceptable answer, you should try using Outlook with 1 account at a time to see if you can figure out which one or ones is/are causing the problem. IMAP works by storing the mail on the server...your client is downloading and storing the mail headers in an index file... When you click the message, it fetches the mail from the server. If you want similar workings with POP3 for Webmail compatibility, you can configure your account to leave mail on the server and it will give you similar workings without requiring a persistent server connection to read mail. Just be nice to your mail servers and don't set it to POP mail every minute....try every 10-15 minutes instead. 😛