I've been using Outlook at work for several years now without any issues, but recently moved to a home office with DSL internet (max of 12mpbs), and Outlook routinely seems to lose synchronization with Exchange.
I'm using Outlook 2013 with a single Exchange account. When I first open up Outlook in the morning, I can usually send a few emails fine, but after Outlook has been open for 5 or more minutes every message that I attempt to send gets stuck in the Outbox. Here's the full sequence of what I've observed:
1. I hit the Send button.
2. Message is sent to Outbox folder.
3. When I check the Outbox folder, the message subject is still bold and italicized.
4. Outlook says it is 'CONNECTED TO: MICROSOFT EXCHANGE' in the bottom right corner of the app.
5. If I hover over the Outlook icon in the task tray, I see that it has a little hourglass appended to the icon, and the following text appears: 'Microsoft Outlook is requesting data from the server'.
6. If I try to open the message in the Outbox folder by double-clicking it, I get the following error message: 'Sorry, we're having trouble opening this item. This could be temporary, but if you see it again you might want to restart Outlook. Outlook has already begun transmitting this message'.
Outlook will hang indefinitely in this state, and once it's hung it will neither send nor receive any new messages. The only solution I've found thus far is to close Outlook, and re-open. The messages then once again will send fine for a few minutes (including the one(s) that was stuck in the Outbox previously), and after these few minutes are up we're locked up once again.
The most helpful clue in my opinion here is that this does not occur anywhere except in my home office, so it must somehow be related to my ISP. It does not seem like it could be a blocked port, though, or else nothing would ever get out.
Can someone please help? I've scoured online forums and tried many approaches, and although many people have a similar problem none of the suggested solutions have helped (nor have I found an identical problem posting).