Outlook slow -- does not refresh on desktop

[mwiemann]

I have about 25 users connected to Exchange 5.5 using Outlook. The outlook client doesn't always update to show new messages received, or messages sent. If you click around to different folders within Outlook, it will refresh. Does anyone know what might be going on?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[ATCal]

Boy does this sound familiar.
I would presume that you have a firewall and that you Exchange server is either in a DMZ or on the outside. If this is the case, (which it was mine), then your problem is that new mail push notifications use indiscriminate UDP ports for transmission, and do not pass through will standard port allowances. The way I solved it was to put a lightweight box in the DMZ hosting OWA and the IMS. My mailbox server could then reside on the inside unobstructed by the firewall. It seems as thought the Servers can push through to each other without a problem with the standard port allowances.

The result- instant mail notifications.
I have heard of other ways of doing this but could not make them work.

Al
atc-computing@home.com

 

[mwiemann]

Thank you! That sounds like that could definitely be the culprit!

 

[inquisitor]

I have this same problem with the emails not refreshing in Outlook, but our exchange 5.5 server is inside our firewall. The problem seems to be worse with internal email flowing between employees than external emails coming in through our firewall...has anyone seen this, or does anyone have a fix?

 

[mwiemann]

The problem I had was really a DNS issue. The network here was using WINS for internal address resolution and the WINS database was corrupt, so network requests weren't being routed efficiently. I disabled WINS and set up an internal DNS server and voila, all problems went away. One way to check to see if DNS is what's causing your problem is to open a command window and ping your exchange server. If it takes forever to find the server, it's most likely an addressing issue