365 not syncing accross devices

[frase]

I have a customer who has had ongoing issues since they had a company setup their domain, website and using them as a webhost.
They are using 365 across multiple Apple devices x2 MacBooks, and iPad and x2 iPhones all setup with their business email from said host.

It is not an Exchange account though is using IMAP from webhost with @companyname.com.au.

There are two issues

1. The email on Outlook does not seem to sync to all devices, as Outlook seems to delay the relay. One email could be received on the iPhone, then hours if not a day later it will appear in the users Outlook on the MacBoook.

2. The users business domain calendar for the users business does not show on the Outlook on the Macbook or iPhone, just an @outlook.com calendar.

I understand Apple use something called "Microsoft Sync Technology". Whether this has anything related to the issue I do not know.

Any help would be great as I am without a clue.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

OK so it's just "365 apps"....not full 365.
So it's not "365 isn't syncing"...it's really "3rd party email via IMAP not syncing".
365 syncs its own stuff like Exchange email, OneDrive, Sharepoint/Teams...that's what would sync there. And it works wonderfully well.
Outlook..the app..via 365 apps, if it's used with 3rd party email..it's just part of the Microsoft Office suite now..an application, and...I utterly despise Outlook with IMAP or POP email. I won't support it with our clients...however I have to occasionally suffer through it if we take on a client and nurse it along until we migrate them to 365 Biz Prem.

Various web hosts run their free or basic email hosting on various servers that don't always follow standards. So it's often a pain to troubleshoot because....settings can be different for <this host> versus <that host>. Can never be consistent! One thing I've seen, is...if you drill into advanced IMAP settings in Outlook, there's a drop down menu for the TLS/SSL settings on the ports...."automatic" can often result in quite a delay. I like to manually set that if I can. I've seen the "auto" choice be inconsistent with some mail servers. Of course triple check the settings for the ports, and authetication choices.

How large if the mailbox? On larger mailboxes, Outlook set up on IMAP really starts to barf.

Resources on the Macbook? Latest, updated Outlook? I know Outlook on Macs is a bit different, it's...not fully featured...sorta "crippled" a bit. A lot of Mac users end up sticking to "web mail".

 

[HCHTech]

How large if the mailbox? On larger mailboxes, Outlook set up on IMAP really starts to barf.

This is a built-in problem with IMAP. Compared to Exchange, the syncing is slower. If you have a large mailbox, and Outlook is set, for example, to check for new email every 10 minutes, then the sync doesn't have a chance to finish before a new check for email is done again. Give this some time and it will corrupt the mail store. Because this is normally a no-win situation (Client won't cleanup their mailboxes and Waiting an hour between checks for new email won't be acceptable) this is a very good reason to pitch getting off of IMAP, as @YeOldeStonecat says.

Not to even mention trying to sync between 5 devices - that's never going to work.

 

[nlinecomputers]

If sync is that important to them the solution is to upgrade to a real service that provides that. M365. Constantly paying you to futz with it versus the cost of a reliable solution. It pays for itself very quickly.

 

[britechguy]

Not to even mention trying to sync between 5 devices - that's never going to work.

I disagree. I've had clients with IMAP on for the same account on a PC, tablet, laptop, and at least 2 phones. Zero issues.

I won't disagree that the initial download and sync is glacially slow compared to Exchange, but once that's been done on however many devices the account is needed/wanted on, I've never seen an issue with them all staying in sync. (This means, of course, that you do have to account for sync interval or forcing a manual sync at times).

 

[frase]

Apologies for confusion, no is 365 Personal with local apps installed. When I was onsite yesterday I did advise the customer to move to 365 Business Standard and to an Exchange server. As this is able to pull data more quickly and efficiently across multiple devices. I am not an Apple fan, let alone five devices.

 

[HCHTech]

I disagree. I've had clients with IMAP on for the same account on a PC, tablet, laptop, and at least 2 phones. Zero issues.

I'll grant that your experience is different than mine. I appreciate that as technicians, we are almost unavoidably biased. Clients only call us when something is broken, so our experience is overwhelmingly skewed towards things going wrong. Nature of the beast, as they say.