Here’s why your emails may not be syncing, and how to fix it

A common syncing issue that your business may encounter

Jess is an osteopath who works from a clinic and does house calls for clients with mobility issues. She uses email on her desktop at the clinic, and on her phone when she’s on the go or at home. Jess also relies on a tablet to demonstrate exercises and to send booking information to her clients. She’s been having problems syncing her emails, making staying organised a challenge.

To help Jess to troubleshoot this tech issue, we spoke with Geoff, a Complex Customer Service Specialist who’s been part of Telstra’s tech teams for over seven years. When your small business encounters a problem, he’s one of the people who’ll be on the other end of the line, offering 24/7 IT support. When Geoff isn’t helping small businesses get the most out of their tech, Geoff is playing Minecraft with his six-year-old son.

Why do syncing issues occur, and how might you solve them?

If you rely on your business technology to maintain good online customer service, there’s nothing worse than missing emails when you’re working on the go. 

Syncing issues can happen for multiple reasons, luckily, Geoff and his fellow tech experts help businesses to solve challenges like this every day.

What to do if your emails have stopped syncing

Geoff says sometimes the solution is simple: your internet connection. Make sure your Wi-Fi is on and working.

If your internet is working fine, try restarting your computer, phone, or tablet. It may seem too simple to be true, but sometimes this is all you need to do to fix the problem.

What to do if your email app or website isn’t working

Sometimes when your emails aren’t syncing and your email host’s website is also not loading, your host might have an outage.

Check that other websites or apps are working on all your devices. If your internet is fine, and all other websites are loading, Geoff says your email host might just be experiencing a temporary outage or disruption.

To make sure your customers can still contact you when your email is down, it’s a good idea to include your phone number in your email signature as part of your strategic business plan.

What to do when you’re not receiving certain emails

If you know a contact has sent you an email but you cannot find it in your inbox, Geoff suggests checking your junk mail. In his experience, emails are sometimes marked as spam when senders have been identified as suspicious or blacklisted in your email settings. To avoid missing emails in future, check that your key contacts have not been blocked by checking the privacy settings both within your email account and on your device.

What to do if your emails are appearing differently across your desktop and mobile device

You email account may be set to what’s called Post Office Protocol (POP) instead of Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). So, what’s the difference between these settings and how could they be impacting your flow of emails? Here, Geoff breaks the terms down.

Post Office Protocol (POP)

POP is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email from a mail server. As explained by Microsoft, POP works by contacting your email service and downloading all your new messages from it. Once they are downloaded onto your PC or Mac, they are deleted from the email service. This means that after the email is downloaded, it can only be accessed using the same computer. If you try to access your email from a different device, the messages that have been previously downloaded won't be available to you.

Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP)

IMAP, on the other hand, allows you to access your email wherever you are, from any device. So, as Microsoft explains, when you read an email message using IMAP, you aren't actually downloading or storing it on your computer; instead, you're reading it from the email service. As a result, you can check your email from different devices, anywhere in the world: your phone, a computer, a friend's computer.

To learn more, visit What are IMAP and POP?

Sometimes, you’ll find that one device (maybe your desktop) is set up as POP, while others are set to IMAP. To resolve this, Geoff recommends checking the email settings on all your devices to see if they are POP or IMAP. To ensure your emails sync consistently, make sure all your devices are set to IMAP. Once you’ve done this, close and refresh your email account. 

Geoff’s tips to help you avoid email syncing issues:

• Update your email software on a regular basis
• Choose strong email passwords and change them routinely
• Consider email login methods, such as two-factor authentication, that require you to present two pieces of verification to log into your account.

By adding the above routine practices to your strategic business plan, Geoff says you can help to minimise the likelihood of future business technology issues.

Want to make sure your business has tech support when you need it most?

Not all businesses are backed by IT departments, that’s why we’re committed to making sure your business, no matter its size, has the help it needs when tech challenges arise. Experts like Geoff are always on call to help with hardware, software, and network challenges as they happen, whether they're with Telstra's tech or not. That means less time wasted on troubleshooting, and more time spent on taking care of business.

The expert voices in this article are those of real Telstra team members. The small business scenario is an example of a common question Telstra’s experts can answer.