Outlook 2010 not working properly since upgrade to Windows

Hi - I'm hoping someone can help. Since upgrading to Windows 8 (from 7) a week ago my Outlook 2010 email has been faulty. It keeps stopping emails coming in or out and I have to (daily) run a 'repair' to get it to work. I contacted my ISP (Virgin) and they said that Outlook doesn't work with Windows 8 and said I should use Live. However, I then added my accounts to Live but it wouldn't accept all of them, and I found the interface very hard to use. Outlook contains all my business folders and email records for my business so I need it to work. It seems to accept my IMAP email account but not the main accounts with my ISP.

My HP desktop machine is less than a year old and has plenty of memory. But also, in general the machine is slower and won't restart (I have to force shut down).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I'm tearing my hair out!

Use windows live essentials 2012 and the mail client there. It is almost identical to outlook and optimized for windows 8. I have office 2010 and use excel, word, and PowerPoint, but as for an email client I found that live essentials runs faster, smoother, and you can do pretty much everything you can do on outlook.

Do not use the mail app tile that came with windows. It blows.

Thanks am trying to download it but it says 'Another programme is preventing it from installing', I don't have other programmes open. Any tips?

The mail app tile is a nightmare, how do I get rid of it?

Thank you!

Just uninstalled the mail app okay

I actually got the same message about something already installing and needing to finish that before installing adobe reader this morning. I just restarted and tried again and it worked.

I would suggest installing the photo editing as well for basic photo work and picture viewing. Messenger and writer are worthless to me. Hell I've never even seen what writer looks like

Thanks - I'll do a reboot, have checked everything is closed but expect it's something running in the background...

Outlook 2010 works perfectly fine on Windows 8, I use it myself.

Obviously the first place to start is the basics. Have you gone through the following to check your settings are correct?
How do I check my email settings in Outlook 2010?

After all the settings are entered correctly, does it show any error messages when you press the 'Test Account Settings' button (which can be seen in the second screenshot down at the above link).

Also, if you look at the second screen shot down, make sure the "Selected account delivers new messages to the following folder" at the bottom is pointing to the correct .pst file.

Outlook 2010 works fine on Windows 8 for me too. I even shared the same PST file with Outlook installed on Vista and W8 as dual boot without problems.

Thank you for your help. I've used Outlook 2010 on this machine for about a year and none of the settings are different, in fact, when I try to change them to Virgin's suggestion (for blueyonder) it stops it working completely, so I'll leave them as is. What I can't understand is why Outlook works randomly now, after working very reliably before I upgraded. Since last night the emails coming in and out were 'downloading' but nothing comes through - I can see the 'receiving 30 emails...' message. Then today, I opened it up again and same problem, so I tried again to do the repair, which worked after the fifth time of trying only to crash at the end. But when I opened it up a minute ago, the 30-odd emails that had been backed up started to come through. So I can't understand why it does work some of the time, but not others. My clients are getting annoyed as my emails aren't reaching them via outlook and I keep having to use my internet accounts which is a pain and looks unprofessional as I can't change the font/signatures.

So, I've downloaded Windows Live Essentials which I see is a web-based email and this worked fine; however, I run three email accounts from Outlook (two blueyonder, one IMAP) and I can't see how to add these. Is there a way to link to other accounts - the option I saw just said add another mirosoft account.

Ideally I want to see if I can fix Outlook as it's the programme I most use, but why would Windows 8 cause problems? This 'cheap' upgrade has cost me hours of lost working time. I can't believe it just doesn't work anymore (as the Virgin tech guy told me). And why does it work sometimes? My internet connection is all normal and the same as alwasy, there are no problems there. I've looked on the Windows website forums for ideas, but nothing there. Any further advice would help.

You might try uninstalling Outlook and reinstall it.

Wouldn't I lose all my saved emails/folders if I did that?

Wouldn't I lose all my saved emails/folders if I did that?

The reason why no-one is answering your question is because no-one wants to be responsible if you lose your emails.

However you should find that your emails and folders are all stored in a *.pst file, so you it's advisable to create a backup of this. If they are business emails and important, you should really backup this pst file on a regular basis anyway, in case you have a hard-drive failure, etc.

If you go to File > Account Settings > Data Files it should show you a list of the Personal Folders and the location of the PST files. I can't think of any reasons why you would lose your emails as long as you have a backup of the pst file(s) somewhere safe, but it maybe worth doing a search around the net in case there is something I've over-looked.

Thank you for your honest reply, and I appreciate the tips. I'll certainly back up those files and also look into reinstalling Outlook before I do it.

I just went into Control Panel and ran a troubleshooter on Programs, selecting Outlook 2010 from the list of programmes. It did a scan and then I saved settings as Windows 7, which seemed to work fine. But right after the save I got a 'Incompatible Program' message in the Troubleshooter window. This says that Outlook 2010 is incompatible, but how can that be if other people are using it okay and surely Windows wouldn't create an upgrade that was incompatible with one of the most commonly used email programmes?:

Just run live essentials. It's works perfect with windows 8.

Add an email account by using the add email account link.

Just some thoughts.

Outlook on mine had a setting that left the emails on the server and every time I opened outlook on another machine they would download again.

2010 works fine for me on a 7 to 8 upgrade.

As before, do you get any error messages when you send a test email in the account setup area?

There is one of the slots that is labeled user name that with my server requires the full email addy rather than just the user name.

Thanks, agh, it's happening again. It opened fine this morning so I thought perhaps my trouble shooting yesterday had fixed it. I don't get an error message at all what's happening is the emails are downloading very very slowly. So the SEnd/Receive Progress bar gets stuck somewhere in the middle and the display for each account just says 'processing' / 'downloading messages' BUT they won't come through. It's got stuck at '6 of 14 tasks have completed successfully'. The green bar still has the light going over it which indicates it's not crashed. When I send a test it will come through, on my phone or online accounts, but not on Outlook, unless I go through and try to 'repair' it again, which itself takes hours.

Whatismore, I seem to be still recieving emails to my IMAP account on Outlook, but it's not sending mine out on any of my accounts.

Just some thoughts:

Is your outlook 32 bit and 8 64? Can't figure the incompatibility message, doesn't make sense???

Before uninstalling outlook I'd delete all of your accounts, reboot and start over if you haven't. I've had terrible trouble setting up accounts at times as has my wife on all versions of outlook we've used. I think it gets confused after trying different things.

Talk to your different servers and get all the info they require. Some have started using different settings in the advanced area that cause similar problems as you are having with slow clunky downloads. My wife's new rig started having problems, changed one of those settings and it cured it - I got a new rig and am using the old settings and have had no problems.

You might try calling MS if you can find a FREE number.