New mail notification for IMAP in Outlook 2010

I’m using an IMAP account in Outlook 2010 and ever since I upgraded, I no longer get any new mail alerts (like a sound and the envelope icon). I used to get these alerts when I was using Outlook 2007 or previous.

How can I get new e-mail alerts for IMAP accounts to work in Outlook 2010?

This is indeed a bug in Outlook 2010 when working with IMAP account. At the moment, there is no available fix for this. Once there is, I’ll update this post with a reference to the update.

Workaround

Until a fix is released, you can create an alert rule as a workaround;

1. Select the Inbox folder of your IMAP account.
2. On the Home tab, click on the Rules button and choose Manage Rules & Alerts… .
3. Click on; New Rule…
4. Select: “Apply rule on messages I receive” and press the Next button.
5. Verify that no condition is selected and press Next.
6. A warning will pop-up stating that this rule will apply to all messages. Press “Yes” to indicate that that is correct.
7. Select one or more of the following actions;
   • play a sound
     at the bottom, click on “a sound” and browse to
     Windows 7 and Windows Vista: C:\Media\Windows Notify.wav
     Windows XP: C:\Media\Windows XP Notify.wav
   • display a specific message in the New Item Alert window
     at the bottom, click on “a specific message” and type your custom message. For instance;
     New IMAP messages
   • display a Desktop Alert
8. Click Next and then Next again to skip the exceptions dialog.
9. Specify a name for the rule and press Finish to complete the rule.
10. If needed move the created rule all the way to the top.

Note 1: Displaying the new mail envelope icon via a rule is not possible. To create a permanent alert, select the action; display a specific message in the New Item Alert window. Another way to create a permanent alert is to configure the New Mail Desktop Alert to stay longer than 30 seconds.

Note 2: Another method to keep track of recently received emails is by using my previous tip of creating a “Today’s Unread Mail” Search Folder.

The final rule creation dialog for creating a new mail alert for IMAP accounts.