Outlook 2003, Gmail & Blackberry Sync Issues

[FrogEh]

Totally perplexed on this one. I cannot get my Outlook 2003 to sync with Gmail properly and having wierd behavior with BB sync to Gmail too.

- use Outlook 2003 on both a laptop and desktop
- use Google for Domains as email account
- sync using IMAP
- have large files stored in email (over 2gb)
- suddenly find my laptop would not sync beyond last Thurs. Eventually, deleted the imap folder in Outlook and re-established the account.
- after almost a day restoring and a resync with Google Mail, the system stopped as I had exceeded Google bandwidth limits.. Finally got Google to reset bandwidth limits and continued resync today. Seems to have completed resync through this morning, HOWEVER the To/From and Date fields are not populating.

- got home and now the desktop is doing the same thing (ie not properly updating). I do see the "All Mail" file is updated but my Gmail Inbox and Sent folders are not showing anything since this afternoon.
- tried moving older files from Inbox to another folder inside GMail and got an error message that I am exceeding file size limits and should consider switching to Outlook 2003 pst format (I think I am already doing that).

- Concurrently with the laptop sync issues, my BB is now adding a second version of each newly "sent" message showing it coming in from me. Doesn't matter if I send it from phone, inside gmail or inside Outlook. The sent item shows (with the checkmark) AND later the phone shows a second version coming from me (with envelope icon).

I'd prefer not to blow away the file / account inside Outlook again as it took a full day and calls to Google to get the bandwidth issues addressed. Not sure that will resolve the issue anyway.

Anyone have an idea of what is happening ?

 

[FrogEh]

Follow-up post

A few weeks back, I cleared hundreds of emails with attachments out of my inbox just to ensure no issues. All worked fine until now.

This morning (after the first post), I deleted many "sent" messages which had perhaps 100mb of file attachments. Suddenly, Outlook is synching again and seems to be back to "normal".

What does not make sense is that I use Outlook 2003 because I was running into file size limits several years ago. I thought Outlook 2003 uses a different structure that allows you to have larger file sizes - mine are definitely under 4gb so not sure why deleting 100mb in files is important here.