Imap Folders Not Syncing Outlook 2019

1. Imap Folders Not Syncing Outlook 2019 Free
2. Imap Folders Not Syncing Outlook 2010

Become a and go ad-free! IMAP: Your messages stay on the serverThe biggest single practical difference between IMAP and the older POP3 is that with IMAP, your email is always left on your email service provider’s server.If your email provider has a limit to how much email can be kept, and you get a lot of email, then IMAP may not be for you.To put it into perspective: as you might imagine, I get a fair amount of email. The last four years’ worth of email in my personal account uses a little over 40% of the 25 gigabytes of storage provided by Gmail.Other providers – most notably ISPs – may not be so generous; but then, you may not get multiple gigabytes of email a year like I do. It’s just something to check on. IMAP: a window into your mailIMAP creates a master copy of your email stored on the email server. The software you use is just a window: a way of looking at that master repository.So, when you set up an email program like Thunderbird (or Outlook, or your-favorite-email-program) to access your email via IMAP, or connect your phone or mobile device to your email (which typically also use IMAP) the best way to think of what’s really happening is that the program is simply showing you what’s on the server.And that’s it.At least, conceptually. IMAP: but it does downloadIf it’s only a view of your email that’s kept on the server, why use a desktop email program at all?

IMAP stands for “Internet Message Access Protocol”. It’s a fancy name for a protocol used by email programs like Outlook, Thunderbird, and others to access your email. IMAP is an alternative to POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3), works in some fundamentally different ways, and makes a few fundamentally different assumptions. I’ll examine IMAP, how it compares to POP3, and when you might.

You can get a view using a web-based interface just as easily.I did say the windows analogy is conceptually the best way to think of it. As with many things on your computer, the reality is significantly more complex.For example, your email program may very well actually download a copy of all newly arrived email to your PC. I think of that as an optimization. You’re still looking at your email as it lives on the mail server’s repository, but your email program has optimized the experience by downloading the email so it can be accessed and displayed more quickly.In fact, email downloaded by IMAP can be examined off-line, if your email program is appropriately configured. And that’s more-or-less just the same as POP3.But there is one important difference. IMAP copies; POP3 movesWhen IMAP downloads your email, it is copying the email onto your computer.

The original email remains in the email server’s master repository of your email; there’s simply a copy of it on your PC for quick and easy access. (Or, as we’ll see in a moment.)When POP3 downloads your email, on the other hand, it moves the email from the email server to your PC. By default, when a download is complete, the email resides only on the PC to which it was downloaded.This “copy, not move” difference between IMAP and POP3 enable a couple of very interesting things. IMAP: Use it on as many devices as you likeSince using IMAP is really only a “view” of the master copy of your email stored on a server you can certainly have more than one computer open up a view.In fact, if you’ve got a mobile device accessing your email, you might be using IMAP already, as it’s a very common default configuration for mobile email programs.Each program using IMAP to access your email is simply keeping itself in sync with the master copy. So if something happens to the master copy – say an email is deleted, or marked as “read” – then that change will be reflected in all the email programs.Delete a message here, it’s deleted there. Mark it read there, it’ll show up as read here: cross-device synchronization.

IMAP: did I mention folders?Unlike POP3, IMAP supports folders.What that means is that if you create a folder on one machine connected to your email account using IMAP, then that folder becomes visible in all email programs connected to that email account via IMAP.And, of course, if you move a message into a folder, that message is moved into the folder in all email programs connected to that account.The only common point of confusion is Gmail. Gmail actually doesn’t support folders at all, but instead provides roughly equivalent functionality through the use of labels. Check out my article for more. IMAP: you can uploadIn my opinion, this is an under-appreciated feature of IMAP.If you place a message in your inbox on a machine that is connected to your email account via IMAP, that message is uploaded and placed in the master copy on the server.In fact, that’s true for any folder, but the inbox has special significance, I think.Why?It’s what most people want to move when they’re changing email providers.Moving from Yahoo! Set up a PC-based email program with an IMAP connection to each, and simply drag and drop the contents of the old inbox to the new.Conceptually, it really is nearly that simple.

Using IMAP for backupLet’s say you access Gmail via the web and only via the web. You have everything you need on any computer you happen to use, simply by logging into your Gmail account.What about backup?A machine running a desktop email program connected to your email account via IMAP makes for a great solution.In fact, that’s exactly what I recommend these days. Most of your email access may be via your email provider’s web interface, but a machine running an email client like Thunderbird, connected to your accounts via IMAP, will download email as it appears.As a backup. IMAP: best when fast and connected; POP3: best for slow or intermittentThe POP3 email protocol was developed in the days of dial-up modems and periodic connections.Connecting to the internet, downloading all your email, and disconnecting was a common way of life, particularly when no one could use the phone while you were connected.IMAP leverages a faster and more continuous connection to the internet. It’s more or less constantly checking for updates and synchronization needs between your PC and the master email repository.Both will work in either scenario. POP3 works just fine if you’re always connected on a fast connection, and IMAP works if connectivity is not always be present and synchronization actions need to be deferred until it is.But if you are always connected and you are on something faster than a dial-up, IMAP might well make for a convenient approach to managing your desktop email.Assuming that your email provider supports it, of course, and gives you enough space. POP, POP3, and SMTP are all acronyms used in configuring email.

We'll look at what they mean and how they relate. Yahoo! Now supports accessing your Yahoo! Mail account using POP3 and IMAP on your desktop email program or other device. There are various options to access one email account from multiple computers, and there are pros and cons to each.

When adding another device to access your email, it's easy to run into a situation where email seems to disappear. I'll look at the most common reason and what to do about it.Posted: February 5, 2015in:This is an update to an article originally posted October 28, 2012Shortlink:Tagged:,. New Here?Let me suggest my to get you started.Of course I strongly recommend you - there's a ton of information just waiting for you.Finally, if you just can't find what you're looking for,! Leo Who?I'm and I've been playing with computers since I took a required programming class in 1976. I spent over 18 years as a software engineer at Microsoft, and after 'retiring' in 2001 I started in 2003 as a place to help you find answers and become more confident using this amazing technology at our fingertips. Your comment that “When POP3 downloads your email., it moves the email from the. Server on which it had been stored to your PC.

By default, when a download is complete, the email resides only on the PC to which it was downloaded.” may be correct if you change your e-mail client’s default settings, but is incorrect for most e-mail clients. For example, I still use OE on my XP desktop, and by default, the account option “Leave a copy of messages on server” is checked. On my Win 7 laptop, I use Windows Live Mail.

Same option is by default checked. In my opinion IMAP is over lauded. How many users actually need access from many devices?

I will bet you that it is not the majority, MS and many others have somewhat tried to make IMAP the NORM the STANDARD. So everybody is STORING, LEAVING ON THEIR SERVERS, ALL their PRIVATE conversations and EMAILS.1. This is big business for MS and other SERVER service providers2. It is highly insecure for anybody to leave their private thoughts in any SERVERS. Read well any warnings from MS and any other: THEY DO NOT GUARANTEE YOU ANY SECURITY FOR ANYTHING LEFT ON THEIR SERVERS.3. The SPEED FACTOR and THE DOWNLOAD frequency story can be easily offset for instance in MS OUTLOOK by setting up the MAIL VERIFICATION parameter to every 5 mins if you need or even 1 minute if you need.I fail to see ANY BENEFIT for IMAP except if you are using many devices: PC in the Office, PC at Home and any other gadget. For all the rest of us who uses one PC or one Device POP3 is a much safer, private protocol.I make 100% sure I do not have any private stuff sitting in any SERVER.

My mail, my stuff in my PC that is the only secure way to prevent all kinds of problems with PRIVATE CONTENT, PRIVATE INFORMATION, and PRIVATE CONTACTS.Why give a Business Opportunity to MS or any other by loading servers of all kinds of info when it can easily and securely sit on my PC at home?Regards,Roger. It’s not clear what you mean by “get rid of IMAP”. The comment you are replying to is pretty much an exaggerated conspiracy theory. IMAP is a protocol for synchronizing email in an email program.

If you use an email program you use either the IMAP or POP3 protocol. This article goes into more detail about how they work. If you want to “get rid of” IMAP, you can delete the IMAP account and open that email account using the POP3 protocol instead. Otherwise, you can stop using an email program all together and access your email via the web. Great article! Without realizing it, I have been able to create my own IMAP-like configuration for just the reasons you cite.

I did it by setting up my email account at the provider’s website to forward all of my emails to a Gmail account, in addition to having the POP3 account in OE. I have mobile access (Gmail acct on my phone), but I still have access to all my downloaded emails on my PC for those times when I don’t have service. The only problem is that when I reply using Gmail, the reply only exists in Gmail and my PC doesn’t get the copy unless I add myself to the recipients (or reply-all). @AustinWhen you use IMAP, the emails remain on the mail server, in this case GMail.

Then Thunderbird or whichever email program you use makes a copy on the home computer. So it is available in both locations. You can do the same with Outlook if you use IMAP. You can do something similar in POP3, by changing the Server setting in Outlook to leave mail on server.

The difference with IMAP and POP3 is that with IMAP if you delete or move an email on your home computer, it will also delete or move it on the mail server. In other words IMAP syncs your files. POP3 simply downloads the files.

Leo, thanks for this contribution. Helpful to many im sure.but there really aRe ‘privacy/security’ issues in this matter and i wished you had addressed them. Ie, just who ‘owns’ the email when it’s on the server?.and for how long?. And when the provider is ‘sold’ on Wall Street, what happens to your stored mail?? If it’d deleted, is it REALLY deleted?? In what timeframe?

All of these and more might be of concern to manu users.Perhaps in your next addressing of the IMAP topic you can address these matters?thankstkj. Leo,Thank you for your celar explanation of the function(s) of POP3 and IMAP email applications.I want to use Thunderbird (I have used it in the past) for exactly the backup reason you emphasized.

However, there is a problem.I am running Win 7 Pro on a 128 GB SSD C: drive, where Thunderbird is installed in the Program Files(86) folder.Now, under NO circumstances do I want the ‘copies’ of my Gmail messages #I have thousands#, which would be downloaded by Thunderbird, to reside on my C: drive!I have 99% of my Windows ‘user’ account folders relocated to my physically seperate D: drive. It makes sense to have the Thunderbird ‘copies’ in a folder on my D: drive.How do I accomplish this please?Bill. @BillI don’t know of a way to move the Thunderbird files to another drive other than changing the registry settings.I can think of a workaround that I use to download my personal email at work. I installed (not really an install as the files are simply copied to the drive) the portable version of Thunderbird on a USB stick and everything downloads to that stick. You can do something similar, putting Thunderbird Portable on your D: drive and running it from there. You can even create a shortcut to it on your desktop or elsewhere.

I’ve previously used POP3 on multiple devices by setting each one to “Leave a copy of messages on the server”. That worked well until I changed employers and found myself on a provider with limits. Every few days I’d get a Mailer Daemon message such as “Your account is using 27M of mail storage, and an attempt to store a message 31M in size would bring it too close to its 50M storage quota. Delete unnecessary messages, otherwise new messages may be delayed or rejected!” Then I had to log in to webmail and delete the oldest or largest as long as I was sure they were already downloaded both at work and at home.We now have a new provider and are set up using IMAP instead but I’m just a wee bit scared of something going wrong on the server and replicating itself on all my devices.The other annoyance with POP3 is that the “Sent” mail on one device doesn’t show on the web nor on the other devices. IMAP solves that, so I no longer need to Cc or Bcc myself on sent messages to maintain the trail.By the way Leo, Outlook 2010 POP3 default is “Leave mail on server. Remove from server after 7 days”.

I know this post is a month old, but I hope Leo responds to this. Because a comment that Darlene made (on, 8:37 AM) is exactly the reason I never moved to IMAP. But Leo’s reply still leaves me confused. (I use Thunderbird as well, like Darlene.)If a massive delete happens on the IMAP server, which is then synced to my local copy, so I restore my backed up profile, won’t THAT restored profile also have the massive deletes synced.So, in other words, if I DO have a backed up profile, how do I make it send its contents to the server rather than have the server sync its deletions with the profile?

So to be clear, I have a machine using IMAP to download all mail as a “backup”. THAT machine then is, in turn, backed up using a backup program such as Macrium Reflect. The net effect is that all my mail from Monday is backed up to my external hard drive Monday night. Now, if on Tuesday the mail service goes wonky and deletes all my mail, and my machine running IMAP to sync up to that then also deletes all my mail on my PC.That’s what scares people, I get that.But I still have all my mail in the backup of my PC. That is the “real” backup, and not something I would have if I didn’t set up my PC to do this.The purpose of that backup is not necessarily to be able to restore the mail to the server (though it can be used for that, although I believe it would be fairly cumbersome), but rather simply to guarantee that I don’t lose any email. Period.After that wonky delete I can recover my email from the PC backup.

Personally I’d probably not restore it to the original location (although that would be an interesting experiment to see if that would then trigger a massive upload to restore the server). At that point I’d be more interested in simply recovering email contents which I’d likely do any of several different ways (just getting the data from the files, setting up the files as a different set of folders in the email program, setting up another instance of the email program not tied to the wonky server, or others depending on exactly what happened and how much email I was trying to recover.)Yes, POP3 can be used for this purpose by setting “leave on server”. The problem with POP3 is that you get exactly and only an inbox.

The folder or label structure as used on your web access or other IMAP-using applications is not transfered as part of POP3. @MikeI’m personally not worried by this as I have multiple backups in place, but this is a valid concern. Just last week all of my GMail inbox got moved to the Spam folder, as I made a mistake while setting a spam filter which accidentally included all of my emails.

All of the emails were gone from my inbox in Outlook. In my case, I was simply able to move the emails back from Spam into the Inbox.Something which might be safer is to use POP3 and set it to keep mail on server after downloading. You have to be extremely careful when you first set it up as most email programs default to deleting the email from the server on downloading, and you can end up clearing your server’s inbox.A downside to this POP3 method, is that you’d have to manually delete any unwanted emails from all of your computers and the server. You made the statement of “IMAP copies; POP3 moves” back when this article first appeared in 2012, and at least one comment pointed out that that’s not true. It’s the mail reading program that determines whether or not the email remains on the server. That’s just a part of setting up a program like Outlook.

Just as you need to tell Outlook what your login and password is, and whether or not the connection uses SSL, you determine whether or not you want to leave the email on the server. And whether you want it deleted from the server if you delete it from your computer. As I’m in the IT field, I have a lot of devices that get a lot of email.

I’ve got my computer in my office, a laptop at home, a tablet, and an iPhone and an Android phone. In my mind, the ONLY benefit of IMAP is that it shows if I’ve read an email across all my devices. On the other hand, although I want a full copy of all my email on my office machine, I don’t need that on every device I have. Nor would I have room to store all that email on my phones or tablet. So when I set up my email programs on everything other than my PC, I tell it to leave everything on the server forever. And not delete it from the server if I delete it from the device.

That way, I can keep only the email on my devices that I am working on, and responding to. Junk mail gets deleted on the server when I delete on my PC. In my way of seeing things, this is the perfect email solution. I always have ALL my email available to me, even if the internet is down. I let Outlook on my PC create folders and use rules to put everything in the right folder.

I have no need for those folders on any of the devices because the messages only remain there while I’m still actively working with that email. I would love to have POP email show as read everywhere any message that I’ve read on one of my devices, but that’s a tiny disadvantage compared to all the other benefits of using POP. This article is a.bit. misleading.Here’s the thing: Unless you set Imap to do otherwise?

Any email you “delete” (even by mistake) on.any. of your computers or your phones or other mobile devices will disappear from.all. your devices! INCLUDING THE EMAIL SERVER!!!

Forever!!!That’s right — delete a message by mistake on your smartphone, thinking you’ll deal with it when you get to your office computer? Not gonna’ happen — the message is gone like it never existed. Anywhere.But with.Pop., that will never happen unless you’ve set your server (Gmail.com, for instance) to do those deletions.I ran into this problem when I set up my email on my new Maverick Mac.

It hard-headedly defaulted everything to Imap. What was worse, the new Blackberry phone system REQUIRES imap.I have learned, therefore to NEVER deleter ANYTHING on the Maverick-system computer or the Blackberry until I am absolutely CERTAIN that I want it permanently erased.BIG pain!!!Thanks, technology.:/. Hi Leo, thanks for an interesting article. I have a question – I use a VPS and had started receiving disk warning errors as the server capacity was almost used up. On investigation I found that my colleague’s email account was causing this as every single email appeared to be stored on the server.

Imap Folders Not Syncing Outlook 2019 Free

I assumed (silly I know) that he just hadn’t edited settings to delete server copies after so many days. So I started deleting the emails. Then I remembered Imap and the brief knowledge I had re how it works. So I stopped. My question is – are the emails I deleted lost forever, or as they will have also downloaded to his PC, will he still have the local copies? Or to phrase differently, when he next connects up for emails, will it ‘Sync’ the two, hence erase all those emails from his Outlook?Many thanks.

Imap Folders Not Syncing Outlook 2010

I have acquired several desk top computers over the years. Had a few stolen also. It’s never occurred to me (don’t know why) to delete anything anywhere. I had set up through Google to forward my emails to another email for a while. Was hard keeping up.

I then decided to CC myself any mail I may need for time/date stamp documentation. But now I have several email accounts with several different sources like a few with Yahoo, one with Cox.net, a few with Hotmail, another with outlook, and finally several dozen with Gmail. Never having ever deleted anything ever from any one of them. I’ve had these accounts for more than 10 years. Some I’ve had for 15 plus.

I allowed syncing to a new HTC device recently and had a message over 18,000 messages were successfully transferred. All my recent learning of this topic creates new concerns for my lack of keeping emails clean. I’m just one person and one of my email accounts has over 18,000. I’m to scared to look at the rest. It’s important for me to keep some from years ago but not sure how I could do that without destroying any others in the process.

What go I do to save them while deleting/cleaning the server of the rest not to mention the issues of possible identity Freud that may endue?. I use IMAP on my main desktop, a secondary desktop, a laptop, and a tablet. The computers are running Windows 10 and Office 2016 (I use Outlook); the tablet runs Android. A different twist on the server vs local folder question.

I’m running Outlook 2010 on a number of machines, connected to an Imap server. Every year, I’ve created folders on the server (below the inbox on the folder tree) named “Inbox 2010,” “Inbox 2011” etc, and moved the email from the “Inbox” to the subfolder in which the email arrived. These folders appear on all of my local machines, right where I would expect them.

Now, I’d like to delete those folders from the server, but keep them on one of my local machines, (as it is backed up regularly as well.) Before I press the delete key, are there any steps i need to take?. Dear Leo,My email has been working well for a couple of years now but for no explicit reason the “Downloading Hierachy / Synchronising” times on start up has gone from a few seconds to several minutes. I am using Windows XP, Outlook 2003 and Hotmail IMAP.Can you suggest why the abovementioned times have suddenly and inexplicably gone so high?. Could it be virus related or could you suggest some other cause???By the way, In-Box down load times are also become much slower.PS: I don’t think its a connection issue as Google enquiry down load times have not changed.Thx for any feed back,Graeme Rees. Before commenting please:.

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Categories and flags are not available in all of my folders in Microsoft Outlook. I can use categories and flags on mail in my POP3 account but categories are not available in my IMAP account and flags are limited to one flag, no reminder. Why?The IMAP protocol doesn't support the Category and Flag properties on messages and assigned categories and flags are not synced back to the IMAP server.

If you need to use categories, you need to use a POP3 account instead or move the messages to a local pst file. In place of flags (and their reminders), drag the message to Tasks (or Calendar) and set the reminder.If using IMAP is a requirement, you can either move the mail to separate folders to separate it or use Automatic Formatting (Conditional formatting in Outlook 2010) to highlight messages meeting specific conditions. If you need reminders, drag the message to the Tasks folder and create a task with a reminder. Categories and Flags in Outlook 2013/2016If having with reduced capabilities in Outlook's IMAP accounts isn't bad enough, I'm left scratching my head when I look at the half-removed Flag and Category features users have come to expect in Outlook. There is no reason why full flags and categories shouldn't work in an ost file, but users are, where flags are limited to on or off and the Categories button is non-existent.Whether you can add a category an appointment or contact, or add a category or reminder to a task depends on what view you are using and whether you know all the right tricks.The category picker is missing from appointments. But you can add categories if you assign keyboard shortcuts to at least one category and apply it. Once you add a category to an appointment, you can open the category MRU by right clicking on the category bar in the open appointment.In Contacts, all of the flag options are available.

The keyboard shortcuts work for categories and as with the other Outlook items, once a category is applied, you can right click on it and make changes. You can even add categories from the options dialog (File, Properties). Yes, in the wacky world of Outlook 2013 IMAP accounts, the category picker on the Options dialog is disabled on mail, appointments, and tasks but it works on Contacts.A user discovered the trick to creating full reminders and color categories on tasks: select more than one. When you right click on one task, you'll get the short IMAP version of the context menu, with options to Flag, Mark Complete, or Delete. The only option for Categories is Clear All Categories (when you click on the Category column). Select 2 or more tasks and viola!

The full flag and category menus appears on the context menu. In an open Task, the Categorize button has one option: clear all but keyboard shortcuts will add categories and yes, the full category menu is available on the right-click context menu.The user went on to add 'My solution right now is to just have a 'dummy' task that I can select with the other tasks I want to change, but it's a pain to work around a bug like this, especially since Microsoft is expecting me to pay monthly for the software.' Flags with IMAP accountsWhen an IMAP account is configured in Outlook, there is just one option for flags: either flagged or not flagged.You may occasionally receive an error message when flagging items in IMAP accounts. This error is because Outlook is syncing with the server.

Select a different message then switch back to the original message and you should be able to flag messages without error. Using Categories with IMAP Accounts WorkaroundThese instructions are for Outlook 2010 and below or Outlook 2013 and newer when you have a separate pst file for calendar and contacts, in addition to the IMAP data file. Use the instructions in the next section when you use only the IMAP account and use the 'this computer only' folder for Calendar and Contacts.While you can't change how flags work (except by moving the mail to a local pst), it is possible to trick Outlook into letting you add categories to IMAP messages.The easy way:. While a viewing a folder in a data file that supports categories, expand the Categories button and choose All Categories to open the Color Category manager. Add keyboard shortcuts to your categories. Since you are limited to 10, start with the most frequently used categories.

Select (or open) the message and press the shortcut. Yes, the shortcuts work on IMAP messages.If you need to assign a category that does not have a keyboard shortcut assigned, add a category using a shortcut then open the message and right-click (or double-click) in the category area above the subject field.Choose the category from the list before removing existing categories from the message.In most cases, the category name will 'stick' and sync to other computers running Outlook. However, colors are per message store so each computer will have it's own list of colors.

Has instructions on how to quickly add categories to your master category list. View the Categories in the Message ListThe default IMAP view removed the Categories column from the message list view but you should see the category in the Reading pane or in opened messages. To see the category colors in the message list, you will need to customize the view. Switch to the View tab.

Click View Settings button. Click Columns. Select Categories, click Add. Move Categories up or down to place it just after Subject. Close dialogs.Outlook 2013 and newer with only the IMAP data fileThe instructions above are for IMAP accounts in Outlook 2010 and below, or when you have a pst file in a profile with an IMAP account in Outlook 2013 and newer. When you don't have a pst in your profile (and are using the 'this computer only' folder for Calendar and Contacts), you can set up category shortcuts using these steps:.

Open a Contact (new or existing) and click it's File, Properties button. Click on Categories at the bottom then All Categories. Set up some categories and assign keyboard shortcuts. Close the dialog.Use the shortcuts to assign categories to email, appointments, and contacts. After you add a category to an item, you can click on the Category InfoBar (see screenshot in previous section above) and select other categories.Add Category Field to the ViewYou can customize the Message list view and add the Category field to the view. However, this only allows you to use the quick click category. You can open the message and right click on the category bar to select more categories.

Using Category Shortcuts Video TutorialUse VBA to Display Category OptionsPaste this into the VB Editor and add it to the toolbar or ribbon. Click the toolbar button to open the Category dialog. Add it to the QAT, ribbon, or toolbar.

This works with messages selected in the message list or open message.Public Sub CategorizeIMAPDim sel As Outlook.SelectionSet sel = Application.ActiveExplorer.SelectionIf sel Is Nothing ThenExit SubEnd IfDim obj As ObjectDim selCats As StringDim gotCats As BooleanFor Each obj In selIf Not gotCats Thenobj.ShowCategoriesDialogselCats = obj.CategoriesgotCats = TrueElseobj.Categories = selCatsobj.SaveEnd IfNext objEnd SubThis simple code can be added to the QAT, toolbar, or ribbon of a message form. Add the following code to the VB Editor and then add a button to the QAT, Ribbon, or Toolbar of a message form.

Click the button to open the Category dialog. This code does not work with messages in the message list.Public Sub ShowCategoriesDialog'by Michael Bauer'Mail As ObjectSet Mail = Application.ActiveInspector.CurrentItemMail.ShowCategoriesDialogEnd Sub. How to use macrosFirst: You will need macro security set to low during testing.To check your macro security in Outlook 2010 or newer, go to File, Options, Trust Center and open Trust Center Settings, and change the Macro Settings. Diane thank you for your amazingly fast response (and with the time difference too!!).I can only assume it is an IMAP account as the 'symptoms' are as described in this article. It came as a rude shock to find the Categories 'missing' and a good 45+ mins of my lesson plan (designed at home with a POP3 account) completely thrown.

The problem is I haven't got much say over the policies/setup of the system which is shared by a variety of learners/communities), however I will enquire whether POP3 is feasible.