Automatic Send/Receive Not Working in Outlook 2016

By Zubair Alexander

- On January 6, 2016

If your Auto/Send Receive stops working for some reason it can be pretty frustrating because you have to remember to manually do a Send/Receive (F9). If you are having issues with Outlook not sending or receiving emails automatically, here are a few things to try. This article pertains to Outlook 2016 but the options in Outlook 2013 are similar. Here's the article I wrote for Outlook 2013: Auto Send/Receive Not Working in Outlook 2013. Solution #1: Send/Receive Deactivated? This solution has worked for me both in Outlook 2013 a couple of years ago, and again in Outlook 2016 today. For some reason, the option to Send/Receive messages gets disabled in Outlook. I haven't figure out exactly why it gets disabled. To fix the problem you need to clear the option Disable Scheduled Send/Receive in Outlook 2016. Here's how.

In Outlook 2016, on the Send / Receive tab, click on the drop-down option Send/Receive Groups.
At the bottom of the listing you will find the option to Disable Scheduled Send/Receive. If you only have a few accounts it is easy to get to the option but if you are like me and have a lot of accounts in your Outlook profile, you need to scroll all the way down at the very end of the account listing and click on the option Disable Scheduled Send/Receive. It's a toggle, so clicking will either enable or disable it, depending on the setting.
Once the option has been enabled (there is no check box next to it), your auto Send/Receive should start working again. There is no need to restart Outlook.

TIP: During testing, it is best to configure the time for scheduled Send/Receive to 1 minute. After you have fixed the problem you can go back and reset your time to the original setting. The default time for a scheduled Send/Receive is 30 minutes. Solution #2: Corrupt Send/Receive Group One of the common reasons for auto Send/Receive to stop working has to do with a group Send/Receive group in Outlook. Here's how to fix the problem with the corrupt Send/Receive group.

In Outlook 2016, go to File -> Options -> Advanced -> Send/Receive.
Create a new Send/Receive Group in Outlook 2016, or create a copy of the All Accounts group. Configure this group by checking the following two boxes: - Include this group in send/receive (F9) - Schedule an automatic send/receive every X minutes (where X is the time in minutes). You must enable both of these options or else Outlook 2016 will not do an automatic Send/Receive. You may also be interested in selecting the option for Send/Receive when Outlook is offline.
Once you have the new group configured, disable the built-in All Accounts group because that's the group that is potentially corrupted and you must deactivate it. You can disable the All Accounts group by unchecking every single box, as shown below.
Restart Outlook. Hopefully this will fix the auto Send/Receive problem. If not, try the next solution.

Solution #3: Disable Add-Ins Most users can fix the auto Send/Receive problem by disabling the problematic add-in. Usually it is a third-party add-in that causes problems in Outlook. I often see people start blaming Microsoft when the third-party add-ins don't work in Outlook but Microsoft is not responsible for third-party add-ins. They are written by a third-party (e.g. Adobe) and are the responsibility of the third-party to make sure they work with Outlook. The best approach is to disable all the add-ins that are currently in use and then start enabling them one-by-one until you find the add-in that is the culprit. Once you find the add-in that is causing the problem, contact the company that created the add-in to see if they have a new version. If not, remove that add-in to avoid any issues in the future.

In Outlook 2016, go to Options -> Add-Ins -> Manage COM Add-ins -> Go.
Here you can enable or disable individual Add-ins by selecting or clearing the box for the add-in.
Clear all the boxes and then enable one add-in at a time. Verify that Send/Receive works. If it does, go back and enable another add-in.
Keep repeating this process until you have found the add-in that is causing the Send/Receive to fail.

Hopefully, one of these solutions will solve your problem. Update: May 22, 2017 Based on Robert's suggestion, I have moved Solution #3 to the top of the article so now it's Solution #1.