The reason I don't use Outlook on my Samsung Android is that I cannot
get notifications on either of my IMAP accounts. It seems I am not alone
as there are several suggestions on the web, to solve what seems to be a
common problem. None of these work for me.
Symptoms: installed IMAP email account - go to account - click on (?)
which takes you to Help and feedback - click 'test push notifications' -
ERROR MESAGE 'An error ocurred. Please contact support for assistance'.
If it is any help, if I delete both my IMAP accounts and leave my Gmail
account, then the notifications work fine.

--
Jim the Geordie

Jim the Geordie <jim@jimXscott.co.uk> wrote:

> The reason I don't use Outlook on my Samsung Android is that I cannot
> get notifications on either of my IMAP accounts. It seems I am not alone
> as there are several suggestions on the web, to solve what seems to be a
> common problem. None of these work for me.
> Symptoms: installed IMAP email account - go to account - click on (?)
> which takes you to Help and feedback - click 'test push notifications' -
> ERROR MESAGE 'An error ocurred. Please contact support for assistance'.
> If it is any help, if I delete both my IMAP accounts and leave my Gmail
> account, then the notifications work fine.

Since you don't mention the suggestions you tried, expect duplication in
responses here. I get very few e-mails to my IMAP account, like maybe a
couple per year (it's with my ISP which I do not use as my primary
e-mail provider).

Since you are using IMAP, you can uninstall and reinstall the IMAP
client, and the client will sync with the server to be in the same state
as before. Go into Settings -> Apps -> Outlook (or whatever is the nav
path to get to the Android app settings), and Stop the process. Then go
into Storage to purge both the cached and stored data. Uninstall the
app. Reinstall the app, and recreate the IMAP accounts. Retest.

"Test push notifications" has always failed for me. I went into
Settings -> Apps -> Outlook to check if notifications were enabled. All
but one was enabled: Info. As I recall, I disabled that one to
eliminate spam. When I reenabled it and tested notifications. Instead
of an error, I get "timed out waiting for a notification". Apparently
Microsoft's "test" will check all types of notifications, not just
new-mail notifications.

I do *not* have battery saver mode enabled. I also do not use Data
Saver mode; however, the Outlook app is configured to use data in the
background (background data = on) and override the Data Saver mode
(unrestricted data usage = on).

What I do not like about system requirements for this app is "Requires
Android 8.0 and up". I have a smartphone that was introduced in 2016,
discontinued in 2019, and has not had an OS update since, so I'm back on
Android 8.0.0 which is the minimum version. At some point, this app
will require a minimum version that is greater than the maximum version
I can get on this smartphone. That is, I'm at the tail end of supported
Android versions. Oddly the Outlook Lite for Android app states a
minimum Android version of 5.1.

The Outlook Lite app is smaller: 5 MB compared to 88 MB for the full
app. Some features are missing. No support for Google Mail API (to
Gmail) or Yahoo's signin API, so you just get IMAP access (which is an
e-mail protocol, not CalDAV for calendar sync and CardDAV for contacts
sync). EAS (Exchange ActiveSync) is supported, but not MS Exchange
Server. No support for OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, Dropbox, Google
Drive, and Box (i.e., interfaces to online storage services).

The Outlook app was released on Jan 28, 2015. The Outlook Lite app was
released on Sep 5, 2022 - more than 6 years later. Both were recently
updated on Mar 1 and 8, 2023, respectively. That the Outlook Lite app
supports only Microsoft accounts, and only supports 1 account at a time
(you have to logout and login to another account) completely eliminates
it as a choice for me.

I noticed in Outlook's settings on my accounts, that "Notifications
from" was set to "Focused inbox only". I do not use the focus feature
in my accounts. I will decided which e-mails are important, not the
app. When I tapped the setting, the choices available were "All mail"
and "Favorite people". "Focused" was not a choice, so I select "All
mail". "Focused" was not a choice because back under Outlook's mail
settings I had disabed the "Focused" feature. Once I enabled focused,
it showed as a choice for notification. I re-disabled the Focused
option for Mail settings in Outlook, and remained with the "All mail"
choice under Outlook's notification settings.

I did get a notification of a test e-mail to my IMAP account, but that
was around 20 minutes later, and when I returned to my home screen, and
just as I was moving between screens. That was after putzing with the
Focused nonsense to get rid of it, and make sure All Mail was selected
for each account defined in the Outlook app. In further tests, my
desktop client saw the new e-mail in a few seconds, and so did the
webmail client to my ISP's e-mail account, but the Outlook app on my
phone took 12, 2, and 13 minutes to see the new e-mail. Obviously with
such long wait times, interactive communication is impossible. With my
desktop client showing the new e-mail within a few seconds, an
interactive communication is possible. IMAP Idle is working in my
desktop client. Doesn't seem to be working in the Outlook app, and I
don't know the polling iterval it falls back to which cannot be
configured. Because I only get a couple e-mails per year in my IMAP
account, I've not noticed how long it takes to get the notification,
especially since I wasn't sending the e-mail to know when it got sent to
measure the delay.