Outlook currently checks for new emails with intervals of 30 minutes which doesn’t really work for me.
I’d like to increase this frequency to every 5 minutes but I can’t find out how to do it. I’ve check about everywhere in my Account Settings and went through many options as well.
Where can I set how often Outlook should look for new messages?
The option is still there but granted; You kinda need to know that it exists in order to find it since Outlook 2010.
There are 3 “easy” ways of accessing this option;
- Keyboard shortcut
CTRL+ALT+S (works for all Outlook versions) - Options menu
File-> Options-> section Advanced-> button Send/Receive… - Ribbon
tab Send/Receive-> button Send/Receive Groups-> Define Send/Receive Groups…
Note: An overview of the locations for the most common Outlook options across versions can be found in the guide; Where can I find…?
What to set the automatic send/receive frequency to
Don’t set the automatic send/receive interval too short or you could end up endlessly polling the mail server, Send/Receive errors and sometimes even duplicates.
If you only have 1 account, do not set it too check more often than once every 5 minutes. For 2 or 3 accounts, every 10 minutes would be recommended. From there, add 5 minutes for every 2-3 accounts that you add until you reach 30 minutes.
Note: This option does not affect Exchange accounts as Cached Exchange Mode uses a different send/receive mechanism which is near instant. However, the Offline send/receive interval does apply to Exchange accounts when you set Outlook to Work Offline.
By default Outlook checks for new messages every 30 minutes.
Separate send/receive intervals can be set for online and offline mode.
