Send/Receive button doesn’t work for Exchange and Outlook.com accounts

Exchange accounts do not send and receive emails via the regular send/receive process. Instead, it syncs its emails with up to a 60 second delay.

This makes a forced send/receive (nearly) pointless for Exchange accounts.

However, you can still force a sync via the “Update Folder” command.

Note: When you only have Exchange accounts (Exchange Online, Exchange On-Premises and/or Outlook.com) configured in your Outlook profile, pressing the Send/Receive button will not do anything; Not even open the Send/Receive dialog.

Update Folder

If you want to force a sync for your Exchange account, then you can use the Update Folder command;

• Send/Receive-> Update Folder

Unlike its name suggests, it does actually process all the changes between your mailbox in Outlook and the Exchange server.

Update Folder command on the Send/Receive tab.

Extra Tip!
Using the Update Folder command is also a great way to reconnect to the Exchange server when you connection status is “Disconnected” even after reconnecting to the Internet or WLAN.

Replacing the Send/Receive button with Update Folder on the QAT

As mentioned before, when you only have Exchange accounts configured in your Outlook profile, the Send/Receive button will not do anything when pressing it.

To prevent confusion, you could remove it from the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) and add the Update Folder command instead.

1. Press the down arrow on the right side of the Quick Access Toolbar to open the “Customize Quick Access Toolbar” menu.
2. From the menu click on “Update Folder” to select it.
3. Re-open the “Customize Quick Access Toolbar” menu.
4. From the menu click on “Send/Receive All Folders” to deselect it and remove it from the QAT.
5. Optionally: Rearrange your icons so that “Update Folder” is listed first and thus shown in the top-left corner.
   1. Re-open the “Customize Quick Access Toolbar” menu.
   2. Select: More Commands…
   3. Select the “Update Folder” command and use the arrow keys on the right to move the command at the top.

Replacing the Send/Receive button with Update Folder on the QAT.