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I am helping a small company that currently have an external hosted MAPI solution in Outlook 2010-2013. It runs on 6-7 computers and for all users their outlook takes between 15-60 seconds to start, freeze when they search and so forth. They share a small 4mbit internet connection and a desperate for a solution. On each computer there is some kind of MAPI client running, I don't know what it does.

The company running the MAPI solution have told us that is running as it should and that it can not be improved.

Therefore we are in need of some kind of solution. I haven't used MAPI solutions before, so I have no experience with it, but we tried to move the archive data away from the MAPI and host it on an GMAIL, just to be able to compare speed, and also to see if the MAPI would perform better if we removed 50% of all data on it. Sadly there were no improvement for the MAPI solution, but the gmail works as fast as always.

I read that using MAPI should be fast and work great with outlook, but it doesn't in this case.

Would it therefore be a good idea to switch from MAPI to GMail (or another IMAP service) or am I missing something the could be tweaked in outlook to make the MAPI-email run fast.

Any ideas are much appreciated :)

Dcasso
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  • There is too little data to give you any good piece of advice. You mention there is some kind of MAPI client running. What is it called? As you have seen yourself a web client can be really fast: is it not possible to use some kind of web client instead of running OUtlook? – natxo asenjo Aug 06 '14 at 20:53
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    Have you been able to confirm that the WAN link is the problem? Have you tried accessing the mailboxes from another location using the same method (and preferably with one of the machines in question - a laptop)? Is the link saturated? What's the latency like? 6-7 Outlook clients sitting behind a 4Mbps link doesn't immediately scream problem to me. – dbr Aug 06 '14 at 21:16
  • I'll try to find out which client they use. No, I haven't been able to confirm it is the WAN that is the problem, just seemed like a possible bottleneck. – Dcasso Aug 07 '14 at 07:02

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Use the latest version of Outlook and use Cached Mode on the clients. That will insulate your users from performance problems due to a slow pipe between you and the Exchange servers.

And if you have any service provider that won't/can't work with you to troubleshoot something this basic, you should be looking to replace them, not necessarily the technology itself.

mfinni
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  • Yes I also would like to change provider, that sadly doesn't guarantee a better speed of the mail, but at least a better service :) I will try the cached mode, to see if it does change anything – Dcasso Aug 07 '14 at 07:01
  • Please update us as to the status of your experimentation – mfinni Aug 12 '14 at 13:35
  • I am going out to the company in 5 hours, (first time in over a week) so will give an update when I get back :) – Dcasso Aug 13 '14 at 05:20
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This sounds strange to me. So a hosted Outlook Solution means, that they are using OWA or what exactly?

The simple solution to their problem, if possible, is to setup an in house Exchange/Sharepoint server, period.

Marc Stürmer
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    reading 'simple solution' and 'Exchange' (not to mention Sharepoint) in the same sentence is quite contradictory. – natxo asenjo Aug 06 '14 at 20:45
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    1. SharePoint has nothing to do with Exchange in this scenario – mfinni Aug 06 '14 at 20:59
  • 2. Hosted Exchange has been around a while and does not depend on/is not solely accessed through Outlook Web Access. Outlook Anywhere is RPC over HTTPS and has been around since Exchange 2007. – mfinni Aug 06 '14 at 21:01
  • Anyway, that all doesn't change the fact that if the network connection is real the bottle neck the simplest solution is to setup that server in house. – Marc Stürmer Aug 07 '14 at 06:02
  • It is nowt OWA, just an exchange server hosted at another location, which I believe they just rent on a monthly plan. – Dcasso Aug 07 '14 at 07:00