How to Refresh Outlook on Windows & Mac?
Outlook mailing platform has its own benefits over Gmail or Yahoo. Unlike any other mailing platform, Outlook offers more security, easy transfer of emails, integrated calendar, etc. This is why most businesses today prefer Outlook. However, the only stumbling block in its usage is the slow refreshing rate. The emails you send or receive might not get delivered instantly due to the slow syncing of emails. To overcome this issue, it is important that you learn how to refresh Outlook on windows or mac.
Also Check, How to Fix:- Outlook Send/Receive Error
How to Refresh Outlook on Windows?
Luckily, there are more than one ways to refresh Outlook. It can be done manually, automatically as well as forcefully depending on your requirement. Here’s how it is done.
1. Refresh Manually
The instant fix is to refresh Outlook every time you want to receive or send an email. Though it is not advisable to refresh Outlook manually as it takes a lot of time and you have to do it every time you wish to receive emails. This process seems hectic and unnecessary to users. However, if you wish to continue using the manual method to refresh Outlook, check out the steps enlisted below.
- The shortcut key to refresh Outlook 365 is the F9 button on your keyboard. This will refresh your outlook.
Alternative: You can also refresh it manually by doing the following steps:
- Open Outlook. Click on F9+FN Tab on the keyboard
- Now, Click on send/receive tab
- Click on send / receive all folders
This will instantaneously refresh Outlook for you to send/receive emails. But this has to be done every time you want to refresh it.
The manually refreshing outlook may download incoming messages and send incoming messages on F9 control or by clicking on Send/Receive All Folders. But it does not influence the auto-refresh rate. For example, if the auto-refresh rate is set to 5 minutes, Outlook will automatically refresh again after 5 minutes after pressing the F9 key.
2. Refresh Automatically
Like any other email manager, Outlook also has an automatic refresh outlook inbox in the background. Even though this feature is enabled by default, many users accidentally turn it off. This causes Outlook’s ‘not receiving email’ errors. To auto-refresh after a certain time interval, you can auto-enable it. This will make sure you don’t get any delays in receiving emails. Let’s see how to turn it on and automatically refresh outlook emails in the background.
First Method: Set Outlook to Auto-Refresh
- Open Outlook program
- Click Send/receive tab present on the top left corner of the screen
- Send Receive groups dropdown
- Now, click on the option that says ‘Define Send/Receive Groups. This will open up the send/receive groups window.
- At the bottom under ‘Setting for group “All Accounts”’, there are 3 checkboxes.
- The second check box is to modify how often Outlook auto-refreshes when online. Enter the refresh rate in the box in “Schedule an automatic send/receive every” and make sure to check the box next to this choice. This refresh rate is the time window after which you want Outlook to automatically refresh the inbox. To automatically refresh it quickly, make sure that the time frame is 10 minutes or less. But don’t keep the time frame less than 5 minutes because that will cause duplication and may give rise to repeated entries inside your inbox.
- To perform an auto-refresh each time you exit this app, you can click the third checkbox next to perform an automatic send/receive when exiting.
- Outlook can also receive and send emails when the app is offline, provided that your computer remains on the web. Under ‘When the outlook is Offline’, check the box that says Schedule an automatic send/receive every. Set the time frame for this one too. This will make sure to execute a periodic auto send/receive even if the outlook is offline provided the computer is still connected to the web
- Click on the ‘close’ button.
Second Method: Advance Option to Refresh Outlook
- Open Outlook program
- Click on the File option in the top left corner of the screen.
- Click On Options
- In the new window, click on the ‘Advanced’ Option on the left side
- Under ‘Setting for the group all account’, click on Send/Receive button
- This will open the same Send/Receive Groups window. Follow the same steps given above.
- Make sure to click on all the checkboxes in the ‘Setting for group “All Accounts” and ‘When Outlook is Offline’ set a time frame for the refresh rate.
Doing this will make sure that outlook will connect to the email server and update the emails after that time frame.
How to Refresh Outlook Email on Mac?
The steps are slightly different if you are using Outlook on Mac instead of windows. Though, the steps remain simple. Follow the steps given below to refresh the outlook on Mac.
- Open Outlook program on mac.
- In the left section, you will see your Gmail or Hotmail account.
- Now, right-click on your account and go to ‘Account settings.
- A new screen will open on your system. Click on the ‘Advance’ button given on the button-right corner of your screen.
- Click on ‘Server’ and click on the second checkbox, sync all IMAP folders every _ minutes. Fill in the box with the number of minutes after which you want periodic refreshing.
- Next, click on ‘OK’ to refresh Outlook.
Other Causes of ‘Not Receiving Emails’ Issue
If refreshing Outlook doesn’t solve the issue of ‘not receiving emails’ there might be other causes behind it.
- There might be a network error
- No response from the Outlook server
- A firewall restriction
- The mails might get into the spam folder
- Wrong credentials.
Some ways to deal with these issues can be:
- Make sure to check the credentials before sending out an email to see if it’s reaching the right folder.
- Check for the firewall restriction if it is blocking some mails.
- Make sure to check the spam folder
But even if all these are working fine, sometimes, there is a delay in receiving emails in Outlook.
In the above-mentioned information, we have stated all the answers to the question of how to refresh Outlook 2010 manually and automatically. In case you face issues while following any of the steps connect with the Outlook support team. If you know any other possible way to refresh Outlook, don’t forget to share with us.
