Synchronize Issues with Exchange Mailboxes – Things You Should Know!
Today, we are going to provide you an overview of synchronize issues with Exchange mailboxes. Also, you will get to know about the manual solution to fix issues.
When a Microsoft Exchange mailbox account is configured with Outlook email client, it creates a .ost file. This OST file store a synchronized copy of your mailbox information on your local computer.
At times, when your connection to the mail server is interrupted, the server may not be able to sync all the emails in the .ost file. Thus, it will create many sync issues.
Let’s discuss those issues caused due to synchronization error.
Problem Cause During Synchronization Issues with Exchange Mailbox
When synchronization error occur in Microsoft Outlook you may experience the following issues:
1: It will obstruct the important mailing functions like sending and receiving messages, deletion of mails etc.
2: There are differences or mismatches between the messages that you receive in Microsoft Outlook compared to Microsoft Outlook Web App.
3: Some items such as email messages, appointments, contacts, tasks, journal entries, and notes are missing from your .ost file or from your mailbox.
4: This synchronization issues may lead to the sudden crash of the Microsoft Outlook application.
5: It may also cause hang or slow down the functions of Outlook.
Manual Ways to Resolve Synchronization Issues with Exchange Mailboxes
Well, here are some of the quick workarounds to fix the synchronization issue between Microsoft Exchange server mailbox and OST file –
1: Check the synchronization of Offline Folders
First of all, check that whether the offline folders are correctly synchronized or not. Follow the steps to do the same.
1: Open Outlook and right-click on the folder that needs to be verified.
2: Go to Properties and click on the synchronization tab.
Note: If you don’t find the synchronization tab, chances are that you might not have set up your profile to use offline folders.
3: Under the “Statistics”, verify the “Last Synchronized” field that displays the date.
4: Check the number of items that the server and the offline folder have.
Note: If the synchronization is working properly, you will find that the number of items in both the server folder and the offline folder will be the same.
If the synchronization is not working properly, it means that you have some problem in Outlook profile settings.
2: Run OST Integrity Check Tool
For Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007, there is an OST Integrity Check tool known as Scanost.exe file to verify whether your .OST file has synchronization problems. The tool can quickly eliminate all synchronization problems by recovering the lost information after scanning the .ost file on your system.
But, if you have Outlook 2010 or other latest MS Outlook version installed in your system, you may not find the OST Integrity Check tool. However, if a particular folder has synchronization issues, you just need to synchronize that folder again in the Microsoft Outlook application that you’re running.
1: To do this, right-click on the folder and go to Properties.
2: After that, click Clear Offline Items and hit OK.
3: Click on the Send/ Receive tab in the Outlook 2010 ribbon and click it.
4: Next, click the Update folder option.
3: Reconstruct Outlook OST File
The next method to resolve the synchronization issue is to reconstruct your .ost file. For this, you need to remove the existing OST file.
1: Close the Outlook application.
2: Open Mail from the Control Panel.
3: Now, click on Email Accounts in the Mail Setup dialogue box.
4: Click on Data Files, choose the OST file, and then click Open File Location (go to the location where particular OST file is residing).
5: Right-click on the OST file and click the Delete option to delete the Outlook .ost file.
Note – Before deleting the file, close the Account Settings and Mail Setup window, otherwise, it will give an error message.
6: Restart the Outlook application again. It will automatically create a new OST file for MS Outlook account.
However, it is found that in some cases, these synchronization issues can’t be fixed by the above manual techniques due to OST file corruption.
In those circumstances, we recommended using too for OST Repair. The software not only repairs the corrupt files but also recover deleted data.
The utility is so smart that it can only those folders that have data and skip all empty folders without disturbing the hierarchy of mailboxes.
Final Words
In this article, we have discussed synchronization issues with exchange mailboxes. In order to resolve these sync issues with the Outlook account, a user can use the above-mentioned manual approaches. Despite all the aspects, we also recommended an automated tool that helps users to troubleshoot the “Outlook not syncing with exchange server” issue caused due to corrupt OST file.
