Managing 365 email & outlook : reliabilty, sync issues

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1101

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#289872 5-Oct-2021 09:58

Hi
Im interested in how others manage Buseness 365 email a/c's & keep them reliable.

Ive had several users in several companies where Ive had to set Outlook to uncached mode , just to get it working reliably
Its often where there is 10-20G or more of email in the users email mailbox

Ive seen , in the hidden "sync Issues/conflicts" folder , sometimes thousands of "conflicts" (10Gb worth for 1 user)
Im hoping Outllook unsynced mode will solve the "conflicts" issue , time will tell
These users all have fast modern PC's , with Fibre internet .

In unsynced mode , I get complaints about Outlook being "slow" (ie not instant) , sending or opening attachments

Any suggestions ?

Dynamic

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#2789652 5-Oct-2021 10:08

We had issues like this on lower quality hardware and HDDs. Since moving to SSDs and sticking with up to date versions of Outlook, the number of times we blow away OST files per month had dramatically reduced. We are comfortable with OST files up to around 25Gb on machines with NVMe SSDs.

Keep your cache time short. The ability to scroll back 3 or 6 months is plenty, and this limits the OST growth. Anyone looking for an older email is likely to search for it anyway rather than browse.

Disable caching of shared mailboxes unless absolutely necessary, again to limit OST size. Or set it up as a separate account so it has its own OST file.

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1101

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#2789751 5-Oct-2021 12:37

Dynamic:

Keep your cache time short. The ability to scroll back 3 or 6 months is plenty, and this limits the OST growth.

I found that users had issues with searching with partially cached setups . It would only search the cached mail with that setup .
It may have been due to the many many subfolders they added ?
So I had to set to fully uncached .

Dynamic

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#2789769 5-Oct-2021 13:27

1101:

I found that users had issues with searching with partially cached setups . It would only search the cached mail with that setup .
It may have been due to the many many subfolders they added ?
So I had to set to fully uncached .

The searching should be fine and transparent across cached and uncached email if you are using an up to date Outlook. I have seen issues in the past, but not for a couple of years. Close to 100% of our clients are using the rented 365 versions of MSOffice so they are kept up to date. Before that, having different clients on different versins caused lots of headaches. What version are you using?

One issue I am aware of that I believe is still current is that when searching a shared mailbox, even if you tell Outlook to search the Current Mailbox it actually only searches the current folder. I make clients aware of this when they raise issues around Outlook search, and once they keep that in mind they are generally able to hunt out what they need pretty easily. One clint with massive archives hops onto OWA to do searches on shared mailboxes, as that search will cover the entire mailbox. For another client, we load the shared mailbox into Outlook as a regular account so they can search the whole mailbox as easily as searching their main mailbox.

If time allows, perhaps set up a spare machine and have a bit of a play with searching local and shared mailboxes to confirm the above.

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sampler

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#2789981 5-Oct-2021 15:35

I have had a number of clients on any number of device configs/connections have issues syncing shared calendars in particular. Cache off is the only way to make them all work 100% of the time (but "outlook is so slow" is the response).

Latest version of Outlook 365 in the last 2-3 weeks for some also seems to stop syncing email in a concurrent session some times too. Auto or manual send/receive shows no new emails. Close/open Outlook and it syncs to find new email that had been available for many mins or hours.

My general recollection is most would have 20+ gig of data in their primary OST files.

jhsol

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#2789983 5-Oct-2021 15:42

1 tip I highly recommend is to educate users how to either a) archive their email or b) at least move it out of the "inbox" and into either a different folder (ie Read) or subfolder (inbox/read).

This is because Outlook loads the whole "inbox" folder contents upon load (which can cause CPU/Disk/Response issues).

Performance issues for too many items or folders - Outlook | Microsoft Docs

And as Dynamic has mentioned, configuring Outlook to only download the last 6 or 12 months (I default to 12 in my organisations that I support). will help as well. But the biggest difference I have noticed is user archiving (or auto archiving).

Dynamic

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#2789984 5-Oct-2021 15:42

sampler:

Latest version of Outlook 365 in the last 2-3 weeks for some also seems to...

You can switch clients across to a slower update channel to avoid them being on the bleeding edge of updates. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/overview-update-channels

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insane

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#2790010 5-Oct-2021 16:01

I know it's the sledgehammer approach, but switching to Google Workspace if possible removes all these silly issues. I spend years at a company who used Google and everything just worked, now working at a place that uses Office 365 etc and the number of clunky user experiences and odd bugs here and there is quite noticeable.

Have setup two small businesses with Google Workspace in the last year and not a single complaint :)

Dynamic

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#2790013 5-Oct-2021 16:02

insane:

I know it's the sledgehammer approach, but switching to Google Workspace if possible removes all these silly issues. I spend years at a company who used Google and everything just worked, now working at a place that uses Office 365 etc and the number of clunky user experiences and odd bugs here and there is quite noticeable.

Have setup two small businesses with Google Workspace in the last year and not a single complaint :)

Would the same apply using Microsoft 365 Business Basic and web apps exclusively?

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CYaBro

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#2790055 5-Oct-2021 17:20

insane:

I know it's the sledgehammer approach, but switching to Google Workspace if possible removes all these silly issues. I spend years at a company who used Google and everything just worked, now working at a place that uses Office 365 etc and the number of clunky user experiences and odd bugs here and there is quite noticeable.

Have setup two small businesses with Google Workspace in the last year and not a single complaint :)

I've only got 1 or 2 customers that insist on using Google Workspace and they have more problems than our 365 users.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

1101

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#2790384 6-Oct-2021 09:17

Dynamic:

The searching should be fine and transparent across cached and uncached email if you are using an up to date Outlook. I have seen issues in the past, but not for a couple of years.

Office 2019 & I think Ive seen it with Outlook365

Uncached : the search is ~indexed/processed~ via 365
Cached , the search is performed locally .

re-setting up existing email a/c's (new PC or needed to resetup Outlook)
Caching say 6mths. All the folders will intially only show that 6mths.
There will be ~click here to show email on server~ , click that to show ALL email.
You would need to go through the many dozens of subfolders they created & manually click that

I think thats the search issue , 6 months cached only shows & only searches that 6 months (assuming its a new Outlook install or Outlook re-setup of an old a/c)

ghettomaster

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#2790406 6-Oct-2021 09:39

As mentioned, using limited caching is the best way to balance caching and performance. As a rule, you don’t want the OST larger than 10GB unless you’re on a newer SSD.

Also, to make online mode faster, get rid of google DNS servers and stick with the ISP provider ones. I have seen instances where Aus stored mailboxes are accessed through the Singapore exchange front end, and it was fixed by going back to the ISP dns. Check out connectivity.office.com to find out more.