Confusion over my email clients

[seedman76]

I have two Hotmail email addresses and 1 Gmail address. The Hotmail ones are the ones I use constantly across 3 devices, a MBP using Mail as the "host" for all three email addresses, an iPad3 and an iPhone5s. Problem I'm having is the Hotmail accounts don't sync across devices. For example to delete an email I have to delete it on all three devices. Send and email on the MBP, then if I want to see it in my sent items on the iPad I can't. The Gmail account is used very little but it seems to sync fine as I sent a test message, deleted it on one device and immediately it was deleted on the other devices.

Will Hotmail sync across devices? Is it my settings that need changing? I've done some research but can't figure out the answer. Thanks in advance.

 

[Weaselboy]

What I would do is upgrade your Hotmail account to the new Outlook.com as explained here. Then use these settings to configure your OS X Mail client and iOS devices to use Outlook with IMAP.

IMAP will sync the messages and message status across all devices like you want.

 

[seedman76]

Thanks for the information. I ran into some issues and had to delete my hotmail account from the MBP and my iPhone. After adding them again to both devices without any issues they aren't syncing. I sent a test message from my MBP to my iPhone 5s. The message came through ok. When I read it on my MBP it immediately marked "read" on the iPhone. Yet when I delete the message on my MBP it won't automatically delete on my iPhone. I haven't tried the iPad yet. Any thoughts?

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks for the information. I ran into some issues and had to delete my hotmail account from the MBP and my iPhone. After adding them again to both devices without any issues they aren't syncing. I sent a test message from my MBP to my iPhone 5s. The message came through ok. When I read it on my MBP it immediately marked "read" on the iPhone. Yet when I delete the message on my MBP it won't automatically delete on my iPhone. I haven't tried the iPad yet. Any thoughts?

Did you convert the account to Outlook and then set everything up as IMAP like in the links I posted?

 

[seedman76]

Did you convert the account to Outlook and then set everything up as IMAP like in the links I posted?

Yes I did convert to Outlook and then set everything up as IMAP using the instructions you provided.

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks for the information. I ran into some issues and had to delete my hotmail account from the MBP and my iPhone. After adding them again to both devices without any issues they aren't syncing. I sent a test message from my MBP to my iPhone 5s. The message came through ok. When I read it on my MBP it immediately marked "read" on the iPhone. Yet when I delete the message on my MBP it won't automatically delete on my iPhone. I haven't tried the iPad yet. Any thoughts?

Yes I did convert to Outlook and then set everything up as IMAP using the instructions you provided.

When you say it won't auto delete on the iPhone, did you open the Mail app on the iPhone and give it a moment to sync? It won't mark it read unless you either receive a new email that updates things or you open the app.

 

[seedman76]

When you say it won't auto delete on the iPhone, did you open the Mail app on the iPhone and give it a moment to sync? It won't mark it read unless you either receive a new email that updates things or you open the app.

Yes I did. My inbox is updating because new messages are coming in, but ones that I've deleted on my MBP aren't deleting on my iPhone.

 

[Weaselboy]

Yes I did. My inbox is updating because new messages are coming in, but ones that I've deleted on my MBP aren't deleting on my iPhone.

I'm not sure what else to do. Just make sure you are using those Outlook.com IMAP settings on all devices and it should work.

 

[seedman76]

I'm not sure what else to do. Just make sure you are using those Outlook.com IMAP settings on all devices and it should work.

Ok, thanks for your help. I'll keep researching the issue and post a reply when I get it figured out.

 

[seedman76]

Weaselboy, I called Apple support today. After checking a few settings they told me everything on their end was set correctly and to call Microsoft. I called Microsoft and after being passed to 4 different techs and being on hold for 55 minutes before ever talking to someone (reminding me why I hate Microsoft support) who knew anything about this situation the "senior support tech" told me that fully syncing Outlook/Hotmail was not possible even with IMAP. I explained that all I wanted to achieve was sync my Hotmail accounts across my MBP, iPad and iPhone so that when I delete an email on one device it deletes on all others. The "senior tech" I was talking to said that's not possible with Hotmail. She said if I create folders in Hotmail to dump emails in to save them then those folders would sync to my other devices but simply deleting emails across devices isn't possible. I'm switching away from Hotmail...most likely to Gmail or iCloud...TBD.