Better IMAP in Outlook 2010

I'm not sure if this is the place to mention this, but I have about 9 IMAP accounts and I have all of their inboxes listed in my Favorites. When I load Outlook, the favorite folders show as closed and will not show the actual number of new emails until I click on each folder in my Favorites view. This is very annoying. Is there a way to have them automatically show the unread count on load without having to click each one individually, and if not, is there any way this can be added to Outlook 2010 RTM? Thanks, John

Seems as if you have overestimated your use of "Better". I also have an IMAP folder as a favorite. This works fine. But if I collapse the Folders pane (the left pane on the window) I see all of my favorites except my IMAP folder. Why? I would also like to choose the folder that my IMAP account syncs with.

WTF... Thunderbird 5 minutes compared to Outlook 30 minutes to download emails. Lots of alert emails over the weekend. Still poor performance. I bet dollars to doughnuts, that the m$ coders dont use outlook on an IMAP server, if they did it would be fixed.

Performance is still slow, although slightly better than 2007. It would be nice to have a universal inbox folder that shows all your IMAP inbox accounts.

Hi everyone, thanks again for your feedback about IMAP in Outlook 2010. Roberto: I think you'll find that your sent item is still saved, but it's saved in your "personal folders" Sent Items, even though you had chosen the Sent Items folder on your server. We've confirmed that the Outlook 2010 Beta will sometimes fall back to saving Sent Items in that folder, especially when Outlook is not actively connected to your server when you send the message. Thanks for the report. John: During scheduled Send/Receive, Outlook 2010 updates the unread counts of all your folders. By default, Send/Receive happens every 30 minutes. Between Send/Receive intervals, you will need to click on a folder to see an updated unread count for that folder. Frank Paul Silye: By default, LDAP accounts in Outlook will work the way that you want -- you can type names into the To line and they will be resolved by using the LDAP server, which means you don't have to click the To button every time. I'm not sure why this isn't working for you -- you may want to verify that your LDAP account is set up properly for checking names: Go to the Ribbon, click the Address Book button, then click on Tools, then click on Options. Your LDAP account should be listed under "check address lists in this order."

Andy it is not completely true! PROBLEMS:

- IMAP is too slow

- All imap accounts and every single email MUST have an option to be in the same INBOX folder like gmail does (or think like the 'library' thing in windows 7). I'm sick of clicking different folders and reading/deleting mails

- to make the imap connection faster. Allow outlook to download everything on the server, when the user makes changes/deletes stuff. Let outlook to allow all these actions offline (behind the scene) but when the user stops using the inbox folder or something for 1 sec then outlook must automatically sync with the imap folders.

Onur, regarding your comment about one inbox folder: How many accounts do you have in Outlook? Andy Brauninger

Outlook Program Manager

Having any more than 1 IMAP account will show how inconvenient Outlook's Inbox/IMAP requirement is.

This universal inbox really should be considered of the first priority.

While I understand and appreciate all the hard work going into the improvements of Outlook, I have to say that much is left desired, regarding just bare functionality. Ribbons, buttons, colors, etc... it's kinda useless if the program freezes when it tries to get, move or delete any mail via IMAP. I hate to bring up Apple stuff, but the Mail program in Mac OS X handles IMAP extremely well. I am moving my company's emails from some web host service to Gmail, specifically for the IMAP benefit. In apple mail, I have about 10 accounts at a time: 4 of my own, then the old POP account and the new IMAP account for 3 employees. I just drag the folders from the old POP to the new IMAP and they all just... transfer like they should and I can still use the program. Everyone at work who uses outlook (2003 and 2007) are having major troubles just clicking on various emails, it freezes when receiving, etc. So I tried the 2010 beta on my PC, and it too has problems. I only have 1 account on any of the Outlooks, and it just can't handle it. So tonight, I switched all my outlook guys to the POP service of gmail... how unfortunate. I will continue to try some things with 2010 beta, but it really is not working as well as I hoped, and comparatively, not as well as Apple mail whatsoever! again thanks for the work, but the basic functionality should be paramount before bells and whistles.

Outlook 2003 and 2007 behave horribly when dealing with servers under heavy load, and I can't believe that Microsoft programmers and testers who can do some excellent stuff let it pass. There is the 'downloading hierarchy' wait, the synchronising folders wait. The 'connection timed out' dialogs. The Outlook needs to be killed in process explorer because it didn't recover from the last slow connection, despite the gui being closed and reopened. (Outlook.exe still running in the notification area, failing to send/receive. No menu option to close it.) It really shouldn't be quicker and more reliable to search unseen and fetch the list of unseen mails through manually telnetting than using outlook.

1 Login username pass, 2 select folder, 3 search flag, 4 fetch 100 ,5 fetch 100 body[text], 6 logout. Outlook IMAP always seemed to completely ignore Microsoft's user interface guidelines in regard to just annoying the user. I really am hoping to be surprised by 2010 but in this area Outlook went backward over the last decade.

Oh my it actually worked in less than a minute! Minutes before I kept Outlooks help page open next to Googles help page for Outlook 2007 and entered everything manually, with the usual confuion about the sent / local folders. Came accross this post, deleted the first setup, tried this for fun - voila! Still trying it out but since Tbird 3 is somewhat sluggish I'm looking forward to the experience. Only wish you would add tabbs... ;)

I'm uninstalling my Office 2010 because i CANT use IMAP on Outlook 2010. The speed is totally low, my phone is 10000000% faster than it. Please, be sure it will be working fine to launch the real version that works IMAP.

Hi Andy, thanks for your interest. I use three IMAP and 2 pop3 accounts in outlook 2010. IMAP ones are GMAIl, my own domain and other pop3 accounts are my old ISP and my university e-mail addresses. I hate to say this now my university (the University of Auckland) uses gmail as well. WTF?? To be honest I do NOT like Gmail at all. I cannot compare outlook's interface and usability benefits over Gmail BUT clicking each inboxes and switching from 'send mail from' options every time I write an email really get me stressed about this. I mean if we have one Inbox/Send/Draft... folders for everything, it would be just perfect! We can leave the user the option to opt out for such arrangement. I should also note that current beta version does not show 'new mail arrived' envelope on the startbar for Win7. I created a rule for new arrived messages but it just plays the sound that's it no envelope on the taskbar. I hope you guys get a chance to cover all these issues.

Andy Brauninger: I have not managed to get LDAP working in the way you describe. Is there some documentation that I get access to, to see what additional info I have to add to our LDAP setup on Outlook? Feel free to contact me on frankps(at)gmail.com.

I think that in a version that bears the 2010 moniker, we should be able to move messages between folders when working with Gmail IMAP in offline mode. don't you think?

after all, you wouldn't want us to think that the desktop is dead and we should all use online services.