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Tomb01

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 6, 2009
482
49
Colleyville, TX
Have been using Outlook for a while. Suddenly the past day it has changed somehow. When I open it, to connect to my gmail account, I instantly get the 'too many connections to gmail' message. Despite going into gmail to log out of all other accounts it keeps happening. Went into my Outlook 'preferences' to see if I could see something there but the preferences dialogue box is not working properly. The 'accounts' page does not show the top of the window where my accounts would actually be, and many of the action buttons do not work. Have attached a screenshot of that window, and it won't let me size it to see the rest of the account settings. Likewise the close button does not function. Strange, not sure what I might have done to affect the Outlook preferences display. Any suggestions on fixing this? Thanks in advance.
 

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Well, spent quite a bit of time with the Microsoft support folks chatting today to see if there was a fix for this problem. Their response: Buy support OR: Uninstall and Reinstall the entire Office Suite (I have Office 2011). Pretty much useless from a support perspective, but I probably should have expected that. Their support technology is crude at best, there is not even a capability for us to send them a screen capture (was told that was to 'protect my privacy'). Spent about 25 minutes just trying to get them to understand the problem, then was 'mysteriously' rerouted to another technician and had to start all over again. Finally got to the point where they were unwilling to do anything else without a paid engagement.

Sigh. Well, finally provided me with an incentive to disengage from Outlook, so have shifted to Apple Mail. At least I'll get support for it. Will have to start investigating other Office replacement options.
 
I stopped using Outlook 2011 a bit ago and am now using v. 2016. I know that in 2016 and *I think* in 2011 the default polling period for IMAP accounts is set for 2 minutes. I changed mine to 15 minutes for my IMAP accounts - Gmail's documentation indicates an at-least 15-minute polling period.

The polling period is in each account's "Advanced" preference. I suggest you check that polling period and, if it's shorter than 15 minutes, I recommend you change the polling period duration to conform to Google's directions.

FWIW Google often changes/tweaks their backend, the main reason I gave up on Google Apps.
 
I stopped using Outlook 2011 a bit ago and am now using v. 2016. I know that in 2016 and *I think* in 2011 the default polling period for IMAP accounts is set for 2 minutes. I changed mine to 15 minutes for my IMAP accounts - Gmail's documentation indicates an at-least 15-minute polling period.

The polling period is in each account's "Advanced" preference. I suggest you check that polling period and, if it's shorter than 15 minutes, I recommend you change the polling period duration to conform to Google's directions.

FWIW Google often changes/tweaks their backend, the main reason I gave up on Google Apps.

Thanks, but the problem was not with the Google side of the equation. The Outlook preferences dialogue pane was not scaled properly, so I could not see the accounts, or even move around in the "accounts" portion of the preferences settings. If you look at the screen capture you can see that all I was seeing was the lower left hand corner of the accounts pane, and I could not resize or move around in the dialogue. Somehow I had created 4 additional Gmail accounts in Outlook, and each one was connecting and downloading email, so Google was constantly telling me I had 'too many client connections'. When I went into account preferences in Outlook to fix that problem was when I ran into the preferences pane scaling problem. MS chat support told me to close and open Outlook, which naturally had NO effect on the problem, then offered to sell me support ($149, I think) to debug further. Not interested in paying them again. The good news is now I have started using Mail, there is no need to go back to Outlook, and have started playing with the other 'office' pieces of Yosemite. It is likely at this point I will not have to pay for the upgrade to 2016, unless for some reason I HAVE to have Powerpoint instead of Keynote (am a part time instructor, and the class materials are in Powerpoint).
 
I had this issue a good while back but can't remember how I fixed it. In any case, you're much better off with a different app IMO. I use MailMate. I use Outlook 2016 for work but only when I absolutely have to (meeting room reservations etc).
 
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