Outlook sucks - or how not to support IMAP
Outlook claims to support IMAP, but it really sucks. I assume it is the IMAP support - if Outlook does these things when running against Exchange I can't see how anyone uses it. Here are some of the ways it sucks:
- On initial connection, refreshing the mailboxes and sync'ing the message lists takes a long time. Sometimes 3 or 4 minutes for my email on my mail server (Courier) on my laptop. There is a status dialog, but that is frequently hung.While it is sync'ing there is no response from any interactions - heck, you can't even move the windows on your desktop. The whole thing has the symptom of a single-threaded app trying to do too many things in that thread.
- Rules. When you open your mail client, it runs your rules against the new messages in Inbox, which for me farm some of the messages off to other folders. In Outlook this doesn't always work for IMAP accounts where the move-to folders are also in IMAP (I haven't tested other cases like local folders). The best way I can figure to explain what is happening is that the mail filtering runs when opening the Inbox, but at this time IMAP hasn't necessarily loaded the complete folder list or sync'd the other folders. Move-to rules show the symptom of failing because the mailbox is invalid, even though the mailboxes exist. You then have to go into the Rules dialog, re-enable the rule (since failing disabled it), and RunRulesNow (across your whole Inbox). This sucks.
- Spam filtering is desperately primitive. I'm trying an add-on spam filter SpamBayes now, which seems sorta ok but nowhere near as friendly as the native filtering in Thunderbird.
- Every now and then Outlook goes into a Committing local cache mode in which it just sits for a couple of minutes. Other clients don't do this at all.
- It is very very slow at negotiating secure SSL connections, compared to other clients I've used.
- No doubt there is more I've forgotten. For example, I note that I used to use Outlook for two IMAP account (work and personal) and I gave that up as a bad plan. I can't remember why.
I think the reality is actually a love/hate relationship with those who on occasion drive me to Outlook to gain access to some new app or service. Or perhaps just 'hate'.
As for Outlook itself, well, one wonders whether its support for IMAP is deliberately bad. Meets checkbox requirements, but drives folks to Exchange. I'm frequently told I have to learn to control my cynicism. :)
I remember the Outlook IMAP support not to be great even around deleting a
message. It would put a big line through it, and you then had to do a
separate operation to "Expunge" the messages. Very clunky and the only
email client i see do this. I can only imagine this was deliberate.
Remember to expunge your deleted emails regularly, I found that they
contribute greatly to IMAP degradation in Outlook. Besides, why keep any
emails when you have GMail? :-)
Here here - outlook is the best mail client I've ever used when it comes to
user interface, but unfortunately its IMAP support is absolute crap. I'm
about to switch all my mail to gmail (I've been using it for lists for
ages) as I'm fairly happy with that interface and I'm running out of space
on my mail server (o:
Yeah, Outlook displays deleted emails by default, but there is an option to
hide them. Of course the option is pretty obscure, located in
View->ArrangeBy->CurrentView (I don't usually think of a display
filter as an instance of ArrangeBy).
I too am stuck with Outlook because I require its
contacts/tasks/calendar/notes/Palm sync capabilities. To be fair, it does
these things extremely well, but it's IMAP support is just horrible. If I
used a separate mail client it wouldn't be integrated with the contacts and
everything else, so at least for now I'll have to live with Outlook.
The reason Outlook deletes imap messages the way it does is because there
is not an imap folder with the delete function. So outlook creates is own
method of a two-step deletion process (mark for deletion and commit to
deletion).
Outlook's biggest imap failure IMO is #2 in this post (rules
support)
Well i was googling for possible Outlook imap fixes and googled "outlook
imap sucks" and got to this blog post and I saw it was written in 2005.
Rest assured, 2008 now and I have Outlook 2007 installed and it sucks at
imap! I wish thunderbird was better :( or there was a better solution.
Does entourage have this problems? Maybe i should use get a mac...
Yup!