Why Get Outlook Mail Messages does not return all e-mails?
Issue Description: When using Get Outlook Mail Messages the output is missing some e-mails (usually the most recent ones).
Root Cause: Outlook activities rely on the installed Outlook application and this can impact the behavior in different ways depending on the system and it’s settings.
An Outlook performance issue, slow bandwidth or custom policies can cause Outlook to load e-mails slower, and some e-mails will be loaded after the robot already got the list of e-mails.
Resolution: There are a few recommendations that might improve the situation:
- Ensure the Outlook version is supported and up to date. Check if the version is supported on the below links:
- Enable or Disable (depending on the current setting) the "Cache mode" for Outlook. Test both ways and check if there is a better outcome (This setting has fixed the issue in most of the cases)
From Account Settings -> Select your account -> Change
- Delete Outlook Cache from <%localappdata%\Microsoft\Outlook>
- Use workflow controls to have the robot iterate through your e-mails a few times before starting to process them, giving Outlook time to fetch all emails
- There can also be an issue where Outlook hangs (will show busy on the Icon tray) and will not process any e-mail. To avoid this, use a Kill Process activity to kill Outlook before opening it
- If the e-mails have specific subjects, add conditions to filter out wrong e-mails
- Computer resources can also impact this. Make sure to meet the Robot System Requirements and extra resources (RAM,CPU) are present for Outlook.
If none of the above helps, if using a Cloud service provider such as Microsoft's Exchange Online or Google's GSUITE, consider using the dedicated activities, that are API based and does not require any app to be installed.
- For Exchange Online (Office 365), use the Microsoft 365 activity package
- For GSUITE, use Google Workspace activity package
- For other services, use IMAP, POP, SMTP activities.