Why won't Outlook send/receive on startup?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Uncle Bob
  • Start date Start date
U

Uncle Bob

Does anyone know why Outlook 2003 sends/receives on exit, but not on startup?

Thanks for any help.
 
How could we? You've provided no information. It would make sense to include
upgrade path, mail account type, connection type and automatic polling
settings so someone could troubleshoot your problem.
 
Upgrade was from Outlook Express. Type is POP/
SMTP. The OS is XP Home. ISP is Comcast (broadband).

I have read many posts on this forum in an attempt to resolve this. I
have noticed that you helped many others, Russ, and I appreciate your
reply to my question.

I followed the instructions provided in MS Q312336. I saw Q 320836 as
well. I also checked to make sure "working offline" wasn't selected.
Under Send/Receive Settings, I currently have NO
boxes checked although most have been tried at some point. Some were
unchecked as per instructions of Q312336. I do not want any online or
offline scheduled checks: they may interfere with audio recording
applications I use.
 
Then you can't do it. You must set an automatic send receive interval in
order to have an automatic poll on startup. Why not just set a long one,
like 24 hours (1440 minutes)?
 
Under S/R settings, I have checked ALL the boxes:

All Accounts:
*Include this group in S/R
*Schedule auto S/R
*Perform S/R on exit

Offline:
*Include group in S/R
*Schedule auto S/R

I had tried most all permutations of checking these boxes before. No
change resulted.

Thanks,
 
I kept the default five minutes for purposes of this test. AND, since
I just opened Outlook this morning to check email, and since I had to
click "S/R" to download msgs, it's clear that the scheduling function
isn't working, at least when Outlook isn't active.
 
(Russ, my Google newsgroup account lags behind real-time posting by a
few hours, so you may have already responded to my previous post this
morning.)

I have verified that scheduled S/R DOES work when Outlook is running.
Scheduled S/R DOES NOT work when Outlook is not running.
 
Well, yes.
How were you expecting it to work when the program is not running?
What am I missing here?
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
Uncle Bob said:
(Russ, my Google newsgroup account lags behind real-time posting by a
few hours, so you may have already responded to my previous post this
morning.)

I have verified that scheduled S/R DOES work when Outlook is running.
Scheduled S/R DOES NOT work when Outlook is not running.

"Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]" <[email protected]> wrote in message
What interval did you set?
--
 
I expected it to work when the program is not running because of the
following menu tree in Outlook:

TOOLS
SEND/RECEIVE GROUPS
-Setting for group "All Accounts"
-When Outlook is offline
-schedule an automatic S/R every _____ minutes

To me, that's a logical assumption, but I'm not a software engineer.
Which leads me to the question of your fit in this mix.

What are your credentials?
Who pays you, if anyone, for your participation in this newsgroup?
How did you come to be so condescending in your attitude?
 
You misunderstood. I wasn't being condescending. I was confused by your
question and thought perhaps I was missing something or that I was
misunderstanding you. I've never seen anyone interpret "Offline" to mean the
same thing as "exit." When you exit Outlook, it no longer runs, so it can't
do any automatic polling. "Offline" means no longer connected to the mail
server, but the program is still running. Now I understand why you made the
assumption you did. Sorry for being so thick.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
Uncle Bob said:
I expected it to work when the program is not running because of the
following menu tree in Outlook:

TOOLS
SEND/RECEIVE GROUPS
-Setting for group "All Accounts"
-When Outlook is offline
-schedule an automatic S/R every _____ minutes

To me, that's a logical assumption, but I'm not a software engineer.
Which leads me to the question of your fit in this mix.

What are your credentials?
Who pays you, if anyone, for your participation in this newsgroup?
How did you come to be so condescending in your attitude?


"Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]" <[email protected]> wrote in message
Well, yes.
How were you expecting it to work when the program is not running?
What am I missing here?
 
WAY THANKS UNCLE BOB!!!! I have been struggling with this question ever since we upgraded from Outlook Express to this version of Outlook. I use Outlook from Office 2000 SR-1 and we (still) have the ability to send/receive mail upon startup. We also had that option with Outlook Express. It is simply with this version of Outlook (2002 V10) that the send/receive feature at startup is not available

Russ, All of Uncle Bob's questions are valid. Your solution to set a default send/receive of 24 hours is unacceptable. Please forward this request to someone that is more knowledgable than you. You have only insulted Uncle Bob and all the other people who have sincerely read and tried to configure Outlook 2002 to run a send/receive at startup. Stop asking all the condescending questions and find someone who actually understands the problem.
 
There is no missing feature here, nor any request to send. Send/Receive at
startup works perfectly well in Outlook 2002 when you are configured
correctly with an automatic polling interval. The option to poll at startup
was actually linked to the automatic polling option in Outlook 2002 _in
response_ to users' requests! Few users want to poll automatically at
startup then never again. For those that do, setting a long polling interval
works perfectly well.

Asking questions is not condescending. The questions are simply necessary
since people posting about problems with polling at startup often post none
of the information necessary for troubleshooting. Like you, for instance.
Your conclusion is not correct. Polling on startup is most certainly
available in Outlook 2002. You have provided no information about your
configuration that would permit troubleshooting as to why you can't get it
to work. I will most happily leave this thread now and let someone more
knowledgeable take over. I hope you provide them with the information they
need and are kinder to them.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
Peter M said:
WAY THANKS UNCLE BOB!!!! I have been struggling with this question ever
since we upgraded from Outlook Express to this version of Outlook. I use
Outlook from Office 2000 SR-1 and we (still) have the ability to
send/receive mail upon startup. We also had that option with Outlook
Express. It is simply with this version of Outlook (2002 V10) that the
send/receive feature at startup is not available.
Russ, All of Uncle Bob's questions are valid. Your solution to set a
default send/receive of 24 hours is unacceptable. Please forward this
request to someone that is more knowledgable than you. You have only
insulted Uncle Bob and all the other people who have sincerely read and
tried to configure Outlook 2002 to run a send/receive at startup. Stop
asking all the condescending questions and find someone who actually
understands the problem.
 
Russ, Your response proves that you are not listening to the customer. The original question was very simple: why doesn't Outlook send/receive at startup? Your response was that there was not enough information. In fact, there was a complete description of what the user wanted. They did not say there was a problem ... or that what they tried did not work. Intervallic polling at startup is a different concept from 'send/receive at startup'. An experienced application support person would recognize that both Uncle Bob and I are very well-versed in following directions and providing complete instructions in our questions.

And you are correct ... there is nothing condescending about asking questions. Neither I nor Uncle Bob objected to your asking questions. We both object to the tone of your questions. When you tell someone, "What did you expect?...", you are insulting them. The fact that this must be explained to you shows your weakness in customer support. What you should have said was, "The feature available in earlier versions of Outlook is still available here, but must be configured with intervallic polling," then you could ask if the customer needed help with setting that up. I would understand that and I bet Uncle Bob would too!

I have set up the interval for polling and it works OK, however, let me go on record that I am a customer who prefers send/receive at startup and never again. Also, the option to send/receive at exit is not a desired option. If you see something flash upon exiting (such as the send/receive diagnostic message), you are tempted to go back in and check to see if something new came in. If I want to send/receive at any time, I just click the Send/Receive button. Simple

I recommend a course in customer relations with special emphasis on composition ... wordsmithing, evergreen, whatever you want to call it. You need to read behind the lines before sending potentially insulting letters to customers.
 
Points taken. As a counter point, however, walk a ways in my shoes. MVP's
are not customer support professionals. We are unpaid volunteer end-users
who do this in what little free time we have, trying to help as many users
as possible in a very short time. The number of unanswered posts in these
groups is overwhelming. Many of us do not even work within the IT industry.
This particular question is posted several times a day. Most users who are
having this problem are way beyond the basic steps of simply needing to
configure an automatic polling interval. Instead, they have misconfigured
their mail connection type, have a corrupt SRS group or corrupt profile. Or
they have inadvertently set their profile to work offline. So when this
question is posted with absolutely none of this configuration information
available, it starts off a long troubleshooting process and it will take
much longer to answer.
There is never any clue as to the level of a user's expertise when they
post. Most people who use Usenet are pretty far advanced, so we shoot for a
middle level of familiarity with the product and OS, which of course makes
assumptions. So when in the end it turned out that the reason the user was
having trouble with automatic polling was that Outlook was not even running,
I was surprised and honestly thought I was missing something else. It was a
first and caught me quite off guard.
You look like you have the skills to be good at this. Come on in the water.
Answer just 10 posts a day. You'll enjoy it. You'll also see how challenging
it can be to be able to "read between the lines" when you know absolutely
nothing about the poster and when they post almost no details about the
problem they are having.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
Peter M said:
Russ, Your response proves that you are not listening to the customer. The
original question was very simple: why doesn't Outlook send/receive at
startup? Your response was that there was not enough information. In fact,
there was a complete description of what the user wanted. They did not say
there was a problem ... or that what they tried did not work. Intervallic
polling at startup is a different concept from 'send/receive at startup'. An
experienced application support person would recognize that both Uncle Bob
and I are very well-versed in following directions and providing complete
instructions in our questions.
And you are correct ... there is nothing condescending about asking
questions. Neither I nor Uncle Bob objected to your asking questions. We
both object to the tone of your questions. When you tell someone, "What did
you expect?...", you are insulting them. The fact that this must be
explained to you shows your weakness in customer support. What you should
have said was, "The feature available in earlier versions of Outlook is
still available here, but must be configured with intervallic polling," then
you could ask if the customer needed help with setting that up. I would
understand that and I bet Uncle Bob would too!
I have set up the interval for polling and it works OK, however, let me go
on record that I am a customer who prefers send/receive at startup and never
again. Also, the option to send/receive at exit is not a desired option. If
you see something flash upon exiting (such as the send/receive diagnostic
message), you are tempted to go back in and check to see if something new
came in. If I want to send/receive at any time, I just click the
Send/Receive button. Simple.
I recommend a course in customer relations with special emphasis on
composition ... wordsmithing, evergreen, whatever you want to call it. You
need to read behind the lines before sending potentially insulting letters
to customers.
 
Peter M said:
The fact that this must be explained to you shows your weakness in
customer support.

Whatever gave you the idea that Russ was _in_ customer support? He's just
another average joe like you and me, except he has some extra knowledge
about how Outlook works. He certainly doesn't work for Microsoft.
--
Brian Tillman
Smiths Aerospace
3290 Patterson Ave. SE, MS 1B3
Grand Rapids, MI 49512-1991
Brian.Tillman is the name, smiths-aerospace.com is the domain.

I don't speak for Smiths, and Smiths doesn't speak for me.
 
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