Outlook Stuck Synchronizing Inbox

16-09-2021 admin

How to resolve synchronization issues while syncing your Exchange mailbox with .ost files in Outlook?

When a Microsoft Exchange mailbox account is configured by a user in MS Outlook, an OST file is automatically created with the extension .ost. This .ost file is popularly known as Offline folder and it allows user to access the exchanged emails even when the network connection with the server is down or unavailable.

At times, when the network connection switches from being unavailable to accessible, the server may not be able to sync all the emails in the .ost file which in turn obstructs important mailing functions like sending and receiving of messages, deletion of mails etc. In other words, synchronization issues may arise that can lead to sudden crash of the Microsoft Outlook application or may also cause it to hang or slowdown to a considerable extent.

If you’re having Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 running in your system, you need to use the OST Integrity Check tool – Scanost.exe file to verify whether your.OST file has synchronization problems. If you have Outlook 2010 or other latest MS Outlook version installed in your system, you may not find the OST Integrity Check tool. Outlook can access and retrieve mail from my imap inbox when I spam the send/receive all button a few hundred times but my folders do not sync at all. This all worked perfectly with Outlook 2007 & 2010 but in 2013 it is broken and all of the reported fixes are impossible. If you force a folder update, it gets stuck on 'synchronizing hierarchy' and does not proceed any further. I have recreated the user profile numerous times and reinstalled Office. Yesterday I gave her a new laptop with Windows 10 on it and Outlook 2016. Since doing that she finds that things arent synching right with her outlook. For instance there is a folder on her old laptop that has 17 emails in her managers inbox and 4 older emails in the online archive for her manager as they are over 2 years old. Open Outlook 2013, and then click ‘Folders’ tab and choose ‘ IMAP Folders ’. This opens a dialog box containing IMAP folders. Uncheck the “ When displaying hierarchy in Outlook, show only the subscribed folders.” check box. Save the settings and click F9 key to initiate force Send/Receive check.

Quick Workarounds to resolve synchronization issues with your Exchange mailbox server

Here are some of the quick workarounds to resolve synchronization issues with your exchange mailbox server –

1. Check the synchronization of Offline Folders

First of all, make sure to find out whether the offline folders are correctly synchronized or not. This can be done by following the below steps –

Right click the folder that needs to be verified and go to Properties.
In the Properties window, search for the synchronization tab and click it. If you don’t find the synchronization tab, chances are that you might not have set up your profile to use offline folders.
Under the “Statistics” of the folder, verify the “Last Synchronized” field that displays the date and check the number of items that the server folder and the offline folder possesses.
Note:

If the synchronization is working properly, you will figure out that the number of items in both the server folder and the offline folder will be same.
If the synchronization is not working properly, it means that you have some problem in profile settings.

2. Use OST Integrity Check Tool

The OST Integrity Check tool is an inbuilt tool that runs only on the .ost files. This functionality can quickly eliminate all synchronization problems by recovering the lost information after scanning the .ost file on your system and comparing mailbox items/folders via the scan log which resides in the “Deleted Items” folder.

If you have Outlook 2010 or other latest MS Outlook version installed in your system, you may not find the OST Integrity Check tool. If a particular folder has synchronization issues, you just need to synchronize that folder again in the Microsoft Outlook application that you’re running. For doing this, simply right click on the folder and go to Properties. And after that, click Clear Offline Items and click ok. Look out for the Send/Receive tab in the Outlook 2010 ribbon and click it. Next, click Update folder option.

Outlook 365 Stuck Synchronizing Inbox

3. Reconstruct your .ost File

Another alternative to resolve synchronization is to reconstruct your .ost file right from the scratch. For this, you will need to delete the existing .ost file. Next, prompt Outlook to download the information again from the Exchange Server for offline usage.

Recently, one of our esteemed clients asked our team of technical experts that when he was trying to execute OST file synchronization in Microsoft Outlook, he got an error message with the details – “The operation failed due to a registry/installation problem”.