Shared mailboxes in Outlook not loading new emails

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Since January 2022 Outlook has had issues syncing new emails for shared mailboxes for some users, the affect of this issue appears random and occurs across different versions of Outlook.

Upon following up with Microsoft initial solutions involved making changes to Exchange Cache Mode options in Outlook but setting users Outlook to network mode cause slow performance with some users Outlook clients crashing.

Microsoft have an official incident logged under EX316072 - A small percentage of users' shared mailboxes aren't automatically refreshing new email in the Outlook desktop client however progress has since come to a halt with the current status as "Investigation suspended".



The following solutions may help with this issue:



Manually update Outlook folders

This option is not ideal as users must manually click Update folder to load any new emails and they do not populate automatically.

  1. Instruct users to manually select a folder and click "Update folder" of press CTRL+M or SHIFT+F9 keyboard shortcuts.
    Update Folders option in Outlook under Send & Receive

  2. Changes to a mailbox structure such as adding new folders will not be reflected unless you delete the profile and re-add to profile.

Outlook profile rebuild

Microsoft advised this as a possible solution however I have had very little success with this method

  1. In Outlook, click File > Account Settings > Account Settings
  2. Select the email account and click remove
  3. Click New, and add the user's account back to Outlook
  4. If your users shared mailboxes are not mapped automatically you may have to add them back manually in Account Settings > Account Settings > More Settings > Advanced > Mailboxes

Use Outlook in online mode

This is a solution that does indeed work but may result in slow performance in Outlook, and possibly cause the Outlook client to crash.

  1. In Outlook, click File > Account Settings > Account Settings
  2. Select the email account and click the "Change" button.
  3. Click the "More Settings" option at the bottom of the dialog.
  4. Click on the "Advanced" tab
  5. In the "Cached exchange mode settings" group, uncheck "Download shared folders"

  6. Click OK > Next > Done and restart the Outlook client
  7. Open your mailbox then click on the “Send/Receive” tab, then click download preferences and select “Headers only” this will help with the speed of Outlook while in online mode.

Official fix for shared mailboxes not syncing in Outlook

Upon following up the issue further with Microsoft, they have identified the cause of the issue and the steps to resolve, however have advised that they will not be patching this bug in a software update, the issue was caused by a corrupted registry key, Microsoft's description of the issue is as follows:

Shared mailboxes stop updating automatically. The shared mailbox status in the bottom bar in Outlook Desktop will show “Updating this folder”.

 

Root cause: Data corruption in a subset of Outlook user profile databases that facilitates mailbox syncs is leading to impact.
The issue can be fixed by deleting any presence of a registry key, it's important to take a backup of your registry before making any changes.

As Microsoft have denied providing a software update to fix, and as the steps are quite tedious to complete on a user by user basis, I have developed a PowerShell script to delete the affected key following Microsoft's official instructions for deleting the key.


Manually delete the corrupted registry key

  1. Backup your registry before attempting these steps
  2. Navigate to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Profiles
  3. Search the registry location for the key 0102663e
  4. Delete any occurrences of this key in this location

Delete the corrupt registry key automatically

You may use the following PowerShell script code that I have developed to resolve this issue much more effectively for your users, opening and searching the registry is a cumbersome process if you have to do it for multiple users.

The following PowerShell script will automatically delete any presence of the affected corrupted registry key.


#-----------------------------------------------------------
# Fix for Shared Mailboxes Not Syncing Outlook
#
# This script deletes any instance of the reg key "0102663e"
# as advised by MS Support, this key can become corrupted, 
# leading to emails not syncing for shared mailboxes.
#
# MS bug log: 
# https://admin.microsoft.com/#/servicehealth/history/:/alerts/EX316072
# https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/shared-mailbox-is-not-automatically-refreshing-for-new-email-in-outlook-94b97f45-c57c-45f3-9716-f3f6bec47c73
# Use this script at your own risk, I will not be responsible for any issues by your use of this and am providing this script to help the community.
# Script written by Luke Gackle                   9/3/2022
#-----------------------------------------------------------

$OutlookProfilePath = "HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Profiles\Outlook\"
cd $OutlookProfilePath

$searchText = "0102663e"

Get-ChildItem . –rec –ea SilentlyContinue | foreach { 
    if((get-itemproperty -Path $_.PsPath) -match $searchText)
    { 
       $key = $_.PsPath

       $keyinstance = (Get-ItemProperty -Path $key -Name $searchText)
       Write-Host $keyinstance.PSPath
       Write-Host "Deleting key..."
       Remove-ItemProperty -Path $key -Name $searchText
       Write-Host "Key deleted." -ForegroundColor Green

    } 

}

Read-Host -Prompt "Press any key to exit..."



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