• Outlook 2010 slow to initiate POP3 fetch of Gmail

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    #315366

    I was wondering if there are any issues with Outlook 2010 fetching mail from my GMail account using POP3?

     

    I’ve noticed recently that when I open Outlook 2010 and it performs it’s initial send/receive to the mail server or when I press the send/receive button that it’s taking a longer period of time for Outlook to fetch Gmail from the server down to my PC using POP3.  The send side of the send/receive process is always quick, my issue seems to be on the receive side of the process.

     

    I recently compacted my PST file and I have also ran the SCANPST utility to remove any errors that might exist so all should be fine in that regard.  Note that Outlook 2010 does fetch my GMail and does so quickly when the actual fetch begins but there seems to be a lag in the time from when Outlook is opened or when the send/receive button is pressed and the actual process of fetching the emails takes place.  Note that although nothing has changed in regard to my account settings for years, I did double check and confirmed the GMail POP3 settings within Outlook and everything appears to be normal.  Some articles I’ve read lead me to believe that this is just a problem on the server side not with my Windows 10 Pro PC or with Outlook 2010 but I don’t remember this send/receive taking as long as it’s taking now.

     

    Does anyone know of any issues with Outlook that might be causing this slow down?

     

    Thanks.

    Viewing 6 reply threads
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    • #315427

      Hi Moondoggy, I use Outlook 2010 all day, every day on my Win 7 Home PC and am having no problems at the moment, although I admittedly don’t use it to pick up my Gmail, simply because I use that account very selectively. Outlook routinely picks up my Yahoo and Hotmail emails as well as an old TalkTalk account that ought to be obsolete but for some reason isn’t. I not infrequently notice the sort of problem you describe with my Yahoo emails and this always turns out to be their POP server, which easily gets overloaded. Then the TalkTalk server is forever throwing me off but that’s hardly surprising – I haven’t been a TalkTalk customer for years! It’s sounds to me as if the Gmail POP server is slow to recognise your settings and – as they are ultimately authenticated – that’s likely to be a server issue. Do you use Outlook for any other email accounts and if so how is it managing them? I can’t think why Outlook would misbehave in respect of one account if its handling another efficiently.

    • #315434

      Check the size of this PST file, if I remember right I think 2010 was sill at the 2GB limit. Then at 2013 it became unlimited.

      If it is getting to be that size, the be sure to empty the “Deleted”, “Junk” and as much of the “Sent” that you can.

      DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
      Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

      • #315457

        PST file size limits are:

        50GB for Outlook 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 and Office 365
        20GB for Outlook 2003, 2007.
        2GB for Outlook 2002/XP and earlier.

        default *.pst and *.ost sizes
        Recommended pst-/ost-file size

        • #315490

          … but, there is noticeable performance degradation in Outlook with larger .pst and .ost files even if you don’t run into any hard limit. That recommendation on msoutlook.info doesn’t go into networking constraints, the code path is apparently dependent on server response times for some operations still…

          POP has also some unfortunate limitations when being used with a service such as Gmail. One of those is that according to RFC1939, the “authorization” step is both authentication and exclusivity – thus it can only complete when the server has ascertained an exclusive-access lock to the entire mailbox contents… and I believe Gmail might be one of those that have message-level locking at least internally. So, in POP settings, are you leaving mail on the server? That would be an obivous path to gradual performance degradation.

          There’s a reason why pretty much nobody recommends POP these days.

    • #315515

      I’m using Outlook 365 to manage a Gmail & 2 other accounts—all POP. No slowdowns.

      MoonDoggy are you using port 995 for incoming, and is ‘…requires…SSL/TLS’ ticked?

      Incoming server pop.gmail.com

      In Outgoing Server, I do not have ‘Log on to incoming … before sending’ ticked—that might slow things, depending on the workflow Outlook uses.

      I leave email on the server until deleted from Outlook trash—I like the free no-effort offsite backup this provides.

      Lugh.
      ~
      Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
      i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

    • #316293

      Thanks for the replies and I’m going to provide some further details regarding my issue as the symptoms have changed a bit as my receive problem has improved but I’m seeing problems now on the send side which actually uses the SMTP setting from Live.com instead of GMail.  I know that this is a strange configuration but my reasons for this setup should have no bearing on the updated symptoms.  Here’s what I’m seeing right now.

      At the beginning of the day after my system boots up I can send messages and receive messages in a flash with no slowdown at all.  However, as the day progresses it seems that it takes longer and longer for my PC to make the connection to the inbound and outbound servers.  Once connected the download and upload of messages goes fast but as the day progresses the connection process gets slower and slower.  On the inbound side this isn’t that important but on the outbound side things were getting so slow I was getting a 0x8004210B error that said that “the operation timed out waiting for a response from the sending SMTP server” and I ended up having to increase my wait time from the default of 1 minute to almost 3 minutes to avoid the error.  Another thing I was seeing is that if I tried to setup a telnet session to port 587 on SMTP.LIVE.COM it was taking almost the full 3 minutes for a response from the server so this leads me to believe that this is not necessarily an Outlook problem.  The curious thing is that if I perform a restart of my system, as soon as the boot process has fully completed emails send and receive in a flash again and the Telnet session response is almost instantaneous.  However, over the course of a hour or so, even with limited email activity, things will slow down again.  Note that I disabled my Norton Security Firewall and even turned off Norton Security when the slowdown started and the performance was still the same.  I have also run SFC and DISM on my PC and it found no issues with my system files.  On a suggestion from others have created a new PST file and imported my saved emails, etc from my old PST and I have even removed my account and recreated it over again and nothing seems to prevent the slowdown from occurring or stops if from continuing once it starts.

      If anyone has any insight into this problem and how to fix it I would appreciate any help I can get.

    • #316328

      I do know gmail is beginning to drop support for older versions of Outlook just like Microsoft. I have seen some users having to change a security setting on their gmail account (not email settings) to allow older versions of Outlook but this normally fixes a repeated password prompt when trying to retrieve gmail in Outlook.

      Check the security setting on your gmail account to allow “unsecure apps”. Older versions of Outlook won’t work unless that setting is enabled.

      Red Ruffnsore

    • #316653

      Well, I think (hope) I have a handle on this problem and I feel a bit remiss about not checking my internet feed before posting this thread.

      Yesterday I started having more problems that lead me to perform an internet speed test.  On one test I was getting 384.1 MBPS and on another test I got 162.1 MBPS speed.  I kept testing and it went up and down but never was anywhere close to the 1 GBPS that I’m paying for.

      Today, I was visited by an AT&T Service Tech who found that one of the fiber connectors was bad and had to be replaced.  Once that was done he determined that my gateway was bad and I he replaced the gateway as well.  After the fiber connector was replaced and my new gateway was up and running I have not experienced any issues with inbound or outbound email.

      Thanks to everyone that replied to this post as your thought were greatly appreciated.

      1 user thanked author for this post.
    • #316707

      I got 162.1 MBPS speed

      Strange, I’d kill for that speed, but don’t have any 365-Gmail-POP problems. Maybe it was the gateway.

      Lugh.
      ~
      Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
      i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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