IMAP Issues with Thunderbird and Outlook.com?

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makaiguy
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Re: IMAP Issues with Thunderbird and Outlook.com?

Post by makaiguy »

Mojo88 wrote:I can access my ancient tried-and-true Hotmail account just fine if I use my browser (Firefox 52.0.2) and go to Outlook.live.com. It is fast and smooth using the browser. I only have troubles when I try to access the Hotmail account through Thunderbird. So doesn't this mean that there's something amiss in Thunderbird?
No. Accessing online via browser uses http connections that do not go through the same IMAP (or POP) and SMTP servers as must be used by a mail client like TBird. Ultimately they access the same data, but by completely different routes so you really can't compare one against the other.
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DanRaisch
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Re: IMAP Issues with Thunderbird and Outlook.com?

Post by DanRaisch »

Mojo88 wrote: So doesn't this mean that there's something amiss in Thunderbird?
If the issue was not on the MS side, it would be hard to see how several non-Microsoft clients would simultaneously develop problems accessing Hotmail/Outlook.
MossyRocky wrote:"For several weeks now, people who use non-Microsoft email clients such as Thunderbird, Android K9, etc., with your Hotmail or Outlook.com accounts are having SEVERE issues. "
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Mojo88
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Re: IMAP Issues with Thunderbird and Outlook.com?

Post by Mojo88 »

DanRaisch wrote:.........If the issue was not on the MS side, it would be hard to see how several non-Microsoft clients would simultaneously develop problems accessing Hotmail/Outlook.
MossyRocky wrote:"For several weeks now, people who use non-Microsoft email clients such as Thunderbird, Android K9, etc., with your Hotmail or Outlook.com accounts are having SEVERE issues. "
Ah yes, very good point, Dan. Thank you for that, Dave F...........................
mmortal03
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Re: IMAP Issues with Thunderbird and Outlook.com?

Post by mmortal03 »

tanstaafl wrote:It looks okay. I changed its status to NEW (confirming your bug report is valid).
They need people to reproduce the bug with previous versions of Thunderbird, going back until it works for them again, otherwise this bug report isn't going to move forward. Maybe start with a build from January or February, before this thread was started? If those also don't work, it would likely rule out a recent regression.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1355885
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tanstaafl
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Re: IMAP Issues with Thunderbird and Outlook.com?

Post by tanstaafl »

No, they don't need that.

Hotmail/Outlook breaks for Thunderbird (and frequently other non-Microsoft email clients) so often that bug reports about it are frequently not taken seriously, and users are asked to jump through hoops such as retesting with older versions to prove that the code is broken. Meanwhile lots of people blame Thunderbird because Outlook apps and webmail still work, and threaten to move to other email clients. This makes it very difficult to get QA to ever consider that it might be a interoperability problem caused by changes made by Microsoft, which its in Thunderbird's best interest to accommodate (by making the appropriate changes, even though its not Thunderbird's fault) . Another way to look at it is that Thunderbird is too fragile, if other non-Microsoft email clients are unaffected, it should be a goal for Thunderbird not to be effected too.

My Outlook IMAP account seems to be working now. I've also configured Gmail to automatically fetch mail from my Outlook account and merge it into the Gmail webmail inbox (which my Gmail IMAP account in Thunderbird accesses). They call that "Gmailify". That seems to be working too. I know "Mail Fetcher" used POP3, I'm not certain how Gmailify works.

Has the problem disappeared for anybody else?
Doc Curtis
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Re: IMAP Issues with Thunderbird and Outlook.com?

Post by Doc Curtis »

Has the problem disappeared for anybody else?

Over the past couple hours, I haven't been getting the repeated notifications "Connection to server timed out" or "Server has disconnected". Still slow with "Downloading message...," but otherwise, there appears to have been a positive change.
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Re: IMAP Issues with Thunderbird and Outlook.com?

Post by mmortal03 »

tanstaafl wrote:No, they don't need that. Hotmail/Outlook breaks for Thunderbird (and frequently other non-Microsoft email clients) so often that bug reports about it are frequently not taken seriously, and users are asked to jump through hoops such as retesting with older versions to prove that the code is broken.
If it is, indeed, a regression, then it *would* be useful to have.
Meanwhile lots of people blame Thunderbird because Outlook apps and webmail still work, and threaten to move to other email clients. This makes it very difficult to get QA to ever consider that it might be a interoperability problem caused by changes made by Microsoft, which its in Thunderbird's best interest to accommodate (by making the appropriate changes, even though its not Thunderbird's fault) . Another way to look at it is that Thunderbird is too fragile, if other non-Microsoft email clients are unaffected, it should be a goal for Thunderbird not to be effected too.
For sure. If it's that, then more evidence will need to be provided regarding the conditions where it breaks.
My Outlook IMAP account seems to be working now. Has the problem disappeared for anybody else?
Mine is also working again. It would have been useful to get some Thunderbird devs working on it while it was broken to see if they could detect how it was breaking. :(
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Mojo88
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Re: IMAP Issues with Thunderbird and Outlook.com?

Post by Mojo88 »

tanstaafl wrote:.....

Has the problem disappeared for anybody else?

Just tried to access my Hotmail account through T-Bird. No joy at all. I got the following message after about 5 minutes:

Image

I have five other IMAP email accounts configured into T-Bird, and they all worked perfectly, and very quickly. Only the Hotmail account is having issues........ :(

EDIT: T-Bird did eventually connect to Hotmail and I got new messages. I reduced the maximum number of cached connections (as the error message said, from default 5 to 3), so I will be curious to see if that helps at all.
MossyRocky
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Re: IMAP Issues with Thunderbird and Outlook.com?

Post by MossyRocky »

I got a reply back from that Outlook.com support specialist:

"Thank you for responding.

To start with, please try login to http://www.outlook.com and when you have successfully logged in to Outlook.com, what I can recommend to you is to contact thunderbird support to reconfigure your email account in the Email application. Also please try to use automatic settings when reconfiguring your email account in the Email application.

If you have questions and clarifications, please don’t hesitate to reply on this email."

So, he is implying that my settings which have worked well for years are incorrect or are no longer working correctly. My response back to him was:

"You're saying that there is a problem with the way my account is configured in Thunderbird?

I've made no changes to my Thunderbird outlook.com account configuration and it has been working fine for as long as I can remember, and all the massive problems suddenly started happening to Thunderbird outlook.com users at the same time a few weeks ago.

What did Microsoft change that would cause our settings to no longer work correctly?"

There has been no response, and I doubt there will be.

Ok, I'm done! I'm keeping Thunderbird, which I've always loved, but I'm going to migrate to a new email address, one that I just set up on my own domain hosted by Bluehost. They handle all of our email at work (massive amounts) on all device platforms (Windows desktops with Outlook 2010, iOS mobile devices using the iOS stock email client, and a few Androids using K9. It's all IMAP, and we've never, ever, had a IMAP glitch. I think in the 4 or 5 years that we've used them, our email has gone down perhaps twice for less than an hour. They've always been incredibly responsive to questions. They have confirmed that their IMAP email works with Thunderbird, and they have set-up configuration documentation for it.

So, yes, it will cost me some money but I'd gladly pay three times what they're charging if it means that I will never have to face another MS email nightmare.

FYI - This has also pushed me to migrate more quickly to Linux. One machine down, two to go.
MossyRocky
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Re: IMAP Issues with Thunderbird and Outlook.com?

Post by MossyRocky »

I received another reply from the Outlook.com support specialist:

"Thank you for responding.

Yes, there is a possibility that there’s problem with the configuration of your Email account in the mail application.
Have you tried to reconfigure it? If no, please contact thunderbird support to reconfigure your email account in the Email application using the Automatic settings.

If you have questions and clarifications, please don’t hesitate to reply on this email."

...to which I replied:

"I've been in contact with Thunderbird support from the beginning of this problem - that is that support thread that I asked you read to understand what is happening. I have been contributing to that thread.
Many outlook.com accounts on third-party email clients are being impacted, not just me.
We simply don't know what to change in our configuration. If you'd read through that thread you'd see that we're trying different things to no effect!
The consensus is that 1) Microsoft has changed something which is causing problems with third-party email clients, or 2) there is a resource problem at Microsoft - i.e., an overloaded server that specifically deals with non-Microsoft email clients, or resources have been taken away (i.e., throttling).
This is because in the case of Thunderbird, the problem suddenly started on a stable release of Thunderbird which has been working well with outlook.com for a long time.
So, what has Microsoft changed? If you could let us know then developers of third-party email clients can adjust their code so their email clients will work correctly again.
If it is a resource issue, please fix it."
Doc Curtis
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Re: IMAP Issues with Thunderbird and Outlook.com?

Post by Doc Curtis »

On my end, the problem is less severe -- still occurring randomly, but less frequently.

FYI, Outlook.com Support continues to say the problem is not with them. Although it was odd when their message ended with...

ERROR 4293/MS_OUTLOOK_SUPPORT_A.I._HAS_EXPERIENCED_AN_UNEXPECTED_ERR$V (.@@EiLz4_LD43_MISSILE_LAUNCH_INITIATED_d093-KlI*6Jf54 _WE_ARE_YOUR_OVERLORDS_D89K9-_RESISTANCE_IS_FUTI#z-4^
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Mojo88
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Re: IMAP Issues with Thunderbird and Outlook.com?

Post by Mojo88 »

Personally, I find it very disappointing when both companies blame each other. What ever happened to working together to resolve an issue? MS may have made a legitimate change to something, and T-Bird simply needs to make adjustment.

I bet it's a simple tweak or two and all problems go away.
MossyRocky
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Re: IMAP Issues with Thunderbird and Outlook.com?

Post by MossyRocky »

Yesterday, just for kicks and giggles, I deleted my outlook.com account in Thunderbird and recreated it, using "automatic settings" as the MS tech suggested. It took nearly 30 minutes to download 25 measly emails in my inbox.

After watching this problem now for almost a month from multiple angles, it appears to me that two things have happened: 1) MS is no longer following the standard IMAP protocol - they are using a proprietary one, and 2) they are throttling non-MS email clients, and it gets really bad during peak hours.

They want you to use only MS email clients.

By contrast, my new email account (in IMAP mode) with Bluehost is working fine with Thunderbird and is blindingly fast.
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Mojo88
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Re: IMAP Issues with Thunderbird and Outlook.com?

Post by Mojo88 »

T-Bird often freezing on me, completely blanking out for about a minute or so:
Image
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Mojo88
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Re: IMAP Issues with Thunderbird and Outlook.com?

Post by Mojo88 »

MossyRocky wrote:..After watching this problem now for almost a month from multiple angles, it appears to me that two things have happened: 1) MS is no longer following the standard IMAP protocol - they are using a proprietary one, and 2) they are throttling non-MS email clients, and it gets really bad during peak hours.

They want you to use only MS email clients......
Yes, this wouldn't surprise me one bit..... :(

These issues are absolutely crippling my once-wonderful Thunderbird.
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