I’ve been using Outlook 2011 for Mac for the past week as my primary email application. It works quite well for email — except for one initial problem. When new email arrives in my Gmail account, my iPhone detects it and beeps almost immediately, but Outlook won’t recognize it for many minutes later. It was getting to be quite frustrating — until I discovered how to fix it.
Check the Use IMAP IDLE (if the server supports it) advanced preference option. This will force Outlook to see new email as soon as the message hits your mailbox. Problem solved!
MMMmmmh… yes I noticed that option too, however it does not help in my case. I have it set to connect to Inbox only, but still – Thunderbird gets the emails almost instantly (try sending one to yourself), but Outlook 2011 on the Mac is taking very long to show them (sometimes over 30min).
Just out of curiosity, are you using imap.googlemail.com or imap.gmail.com in the IMAP settings??
I’m using imap.gmail.com.
I’m having the same issue and the IMAP idle doesn’t seem to fix it. This is a Lotus Domino IMAP server. Same as Maxine Thunderbird and the apple Mail.app don’t have the problem
Have you installed the Office 2011 Service Pack 1 update yet?
I had to rebuild my Outlook and ever since rebuilding when i try to open an imap email in outlook it take a while for the email to show. It says updating.
Also, I cannot click on save in the IMAP Account Server Screen. The OK button is greyed out. Any ideas why this is happening?
Worked great for me. Emails are coming faster than the iPhone. Thanks for the tip ! 🙂
My bigger issue is that Outlook 2011 for my brand-new iMac takes forever to send messages of any size. Today I sent 2 messages that were only text, and Outlook took several minutes to send them. Any suggestions, or is this just a bug of the new program?
I think it’s a buggy Outlook causing the problem. I had similar issues when sending messages, and have since given up on Outlook. I’ve used Mail, Postbox, and now Sparrow. Still searching for the perfect mail solution!