Outlook 2011 vs. my ISP server.

Running Outlook for Mac 2011 under Mavericks on a Macbook Pro.

Outlook is set to send and receive every 10 minutes. This action requests the ISP to download anything it may have accumulated in its inbox, as it should. Periodically, it can go for hours just putting a timeout message in the error log for each request, along with an occasional “cannot contact the server” or words to that effect. The rest of the time it behaves normally, downloading what it has every 10 minutes. It hasn't always been this way. It seems to have started just recently.

I'd like to think that it's the ISPs fault with some weakness at their end, but I don't honestly believe that. Unfortunately, I don't know where to start at this end.

Any pointers?

If it's something that has started recently, what changes if any have you made to your system? It would also be helpful to let us know who your ISP is and what version of OS X you're running on your MacBook Pro.

Sorry about the slow response. I'm doing this on behalf of a friend, and she was slow getting back to me.

We recently upgraded from Mountain Lion to Mavericks (10.9.1) and it appears that this problem started after the upgrade. No other changes.

Our ISP is Frontiernet.net (alias Frontier.com).

The upgrade from Mountain Lion to Mavericks did not change anything that I know of that would have an impact on net communication. However, that doesn't mean it didn't break something... You're going to have to try to isolate where the problem is originating. It could be the server itself is having problems. ISPs never admit to problems and most don't know a thing about Macs; all they know is Windows. It could also be Outlook. Outlook Mac is a version one app from MS and not near as stable as the Windows version. Not specifically putting the blame on Outlook, but you might want to look there. Also, ask her about her normal browsing of the web. Is she having problems with that, etc.?

Well, shoot! I just finished writing a post and somehow it didn't survive. Will I never learn to copy a post and save it just to preclude incidents like this? I'll see how much I can remember.

You gave me several choices and I don't like any of them!

I may sound naïve, but isn't there any incentive to bring Mac's Outlook up to the same quality as Windows'? If you don't use Outlook, you must be using something you like better. Care to tell us?

For what it's worth, she and I have the same configuration, with a couple of exceptions: she's using a 2013 MacBook Pro with a solid-state drive while I have a 2009 iMac 21.5. As a result, her upgrade from Mountain Lion didn't slow her down at all, while my upgrade from Snow Leopard slowed me down quite a bit. Under the present circumstances, the most glaring difference is her dealing with Frontier while I'm dealing with msn.com (alias Outlook.com).

My gut feel is that the problem lies within Outlook, simply because I can't see why an ISP would reject some requests and not others. I'll start with Frontier on Saturday, but I'm not looking forward to it.

By the way, I don't have this problem on my Mac, but our daughter has a similar but worse problem with Outlook under Windows 7. I won't go into that here.

Thanks for your help.

I may sound naïve, but isn't there any incentive to bring Mac's Outlook up to the same quality as Windows'? If you don't use Outlook, you must be using something you like better. Care to tell us?

Click to expand...

I have Outlook as part of my Mac Office 2011 package, however, I no longer need a contact manager and have not installed it. I use Mail with gmail instead. I have used Outlook with a MS Exchange server (Windows version). I suspect that the next Mac version of Office to include Outlook will be either later this year or next. Right now Outlook is glitchy enough that even if I needed it I probably would not use it.