Up to a 3 hour delay in emails showing up in Outlook.com inbox

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[Moonbear]

Since the beginning of October I’ve noticed a delay of between 30 minutes up to 3 hours in receiving any message in my Outlook.com inbox.

When the messages do show up its like they were just sent at that time.

This isn’t my primary email, i use it as a backup when posting to a couple sci-fi forums and to receives security alerts for my gmail.

When this first started, I originally thought the delay was  only with the messages from the forums.

But that appears to not be the case, I changed my gmail password today and never got the alert in Outlook.

None of my settings in Outlook have been changed and to be honest this doesn’t even feel like something that a end user could cause.

Edit: The security alert for the Gmail password change arrived at 2:57 pm

The password was changed at 2:31 pm

• This topic was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by Moonbear.

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I don’t think Outlook is the problem. It is Gmail. I cannot log into my Gmail because Gmail sends to 2fa verification code hours after the initial login request and by then the original request times out.  All other Outlook emails are coming in fine.

I Googled to see if any one else has same problem and there are hundreds of reports over time of people trying to sign in to Gmail and usually the 2FA to the phone works but the code to the secondary email (like yours) comes in hours later.

I tried to see if there was a way to directly contact Gmail and Google searches says that Google will offer no help and you are out of luck if you cannot get through their online recovery. There was even one report I found where the person had a PAID Gmail that they were locked out of.

In addition fully 90% of the scam emails I get are from ******@gmail.com. There is a BIG problem with Gmail. I hope someone at Google will read this and do something about it.

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I wasn’t talking about the 2fa codes, although that doesn’t surprise me either.

I meant the alert emails that get sent when you change a password or first sign in with a new device.

All messages, no matter where they are from, are hitting my Outlook.com inbox between a half hour and 3 hours after they should.

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Send an email to the outlook.com address.
When the mail arrives, check the timestamp.

Do you use a browser or mail client to access outlook.com?

cheers, Paul

1 user thanked author for this post.

J9438

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I’ve only ever used a browser to check my mail.

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Moonbear wrote:

I meant the alert emails that get sent when you change a password or first sign in with a new device.

In your initial post you said the alert was where you changed your password in Gmail. So Gmail would be sending that alert to Outlook. So I am thinking that is still Gmail not sending for hours instead of Outlook not posting for hours.

To illustrate, yesterday I tried to sign into Gmail at 4pm. Got the phone text immediately. Then Gmail said would send me a code to Outlook. That code arrived at 8:20 last night – long after initial request had expired. No other mails are giving me a problem on outlook.

I would venture a guess that Gmail has so many scam accounts sending out all these scam emails (as I mentioned in above post) that their email system is overwhelmed and backlogged – thus the huge delay.

As Paul T suggested send an email to Outlook noting time sent and time received. However, do not send from Gmail as you would not know whether Gmail delayed sending or Outlook delayed posting. Instead get a friend using another email besides Gmail to send test. If Outlook post immediately then it is the Gmail delaying. If Outlook post hours later or with wrong timestamp then it would be Outlook delaying.

 

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Reading this post made me realize that I’d left a very important detail out of my original topic.

When I changed my Gmail password, the original alert appeared in my Gmail right away as expected.

I think the delay is only with messages being posted to Outlook.

 

 

 

 

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Well surprise, surprise. I tried again to sign in this morning and Gmail sent me the email code immediately and Outlook posted immediately.

So now I suppose either someone from Gmail did see our posts and fixed something OR it is as I guessed that the Gmail system is just overwhelmed, and it is a matter of timing as to when you get a response.

Since my previous efforts were in the afternoon and this one was early morning sounds like early morning is the best time to use Gmail??

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