OT: Outlook - when does it download mail?

[Tim Streater]

I just set up a new email account for our Parish Council Chairman on her computer, running I think Win7 and whatever version of Outlook that would be. Anyway it's the one with the horrible tab strip at the top, whatever it's called, rather than proper menus. Glad I don't have to use it on a regular basis, but anyway.

I got the new acct set up OK, after finding that Outlook wanted to be clever and try to connect while it only had partial information. I completed the setup manually and that worked - mail could come and go.

What I could not discover was how to set the frequency at which Outlook connects to mail hosts to look for mail. There appeared to be no setting to control that. In my email client here I have five accounts set up and they all connect to the corresponding mail host at different rates. In Outlook there didn't seem to be a setting for that, that I could find. Where should I be looking for that setting - or is it fixed within Outlook to some value?

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

I googled for: outlook timed fetch

and found multiple hits, but I think you'd need to know specifically which version of Outlook is involved.

[GB]

Stop there. Win 7 doesn't come with Outlook Express, and Outlook is part of MS Office. So, *exactly* which version of which software are you talking about?

[Jethro_uk]

Windows Mail ?

[Roger Mills]

If you're talking about Outlook 2007, it does still have some menus in addition to the 'orrible ribbon.

Go to Tools/Options and click the Mail Setup tab. Then click on Send/Receive, and you'll get some options concerning when messages are sent and received. You appear to be able to create 'groups' of accounts with different send/receive options for each group, but I've never done that. The default is that the options apply to all accounts.

If you're using a later version than 2007, your guess is as good as mine!

[Tim Streater]

Pass. I couldn't even see a way to discover that (I did try to see which version of Outlook it was). But it's not a clean interface. Every tab button on the 'orrible tab bar seemed to have umpty-ump little pop-down menus. The interface is visually so cluttered I didn't even notice whether there were any classical menus or not.

[Tim Streater]

Thanks. That may suffice. To me, the receive rate for an account is part of that account. Having that set somewhere else which additionally is non-obvious I consider to be weird.

If the default applies to the new account that's probably good enough.

[charles]

Click on Help on the top menu bar. the bottom item on that menu will be About Outlook. Click there and it will tell you.

[Brian Gaff]

No that was Vista. You can download Live mail, or use the online Outlook lookalike which fails to work most of the time, but if they have MS Office it will be 2007 or 2010, but versions of Outlook are very similar, and when you find the setting I bet there are lots of folk scratching htheir heads as well. I think its in Options but it might be under accounts, but as the menu system, called ribbon menus are a dogs dinner of property sheets menus and buttons goodness knows where they hid it. Brian

[petek]

I'm running Outlook 2007. If you go to the "Tools" drop down menu and click "Options", you should be able to go to "Mail Set Up" and thence to "Send/R eceive" which will allow you to set the time interval for each. It's so obv ious in 2007 that I think you must be running another version.

Cheers Pete

[Dave Liquorice]

I shall have to have a look as well, was waiting for Outlook (2007) to collect mail I knew was available this afternoon, gave up and forced a manual fetch and it appeared.

But fairly typical of windows, quite often you can tweak things in several unrelated places that affect more than just the program you are using.

I detest the "ribbons" as well, can't find things by simply mousing along the words and seeing what's in the drop downs. Still that's all the later versions of windows appear to be, form over function.

[GB]

I had a quick look in Outlook 2003, and I found it just where I expected to find it. Took 10 seconds.

[Tim Streater]

If I'm ever round her house again (unlikely, generally speaking), I'll see if there is such a menu. There may well have been, but as I say I was visually overwhelmed by the interface.