Outlook 2010 empowers users to create and manage IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol) mail accounts with all it’s inherent features and tools. Everything has been going great so far till I encountered a small yet huge problem; mail alert notifications not popping-up with IMAP mail accounts. If you are facing the same problem with Outlook 2010 and need to check your IMAP (Gmail, AOL etc) mail account every so often, then this post may help.
To get started, launch Outlook 2010, head over to Home tab, click Manage Rules & Alerts from the Rules drop-down button.

You will reach Rules and Alerts dialog, click New Rule to apply rules on specific actions.

In Rules Wizard, we will start off with creating blank rule, click apply rule on messages i receive and hit Next.

In this step, we need to select an account, so enable through the specified account button. Under Step 2 click specified account.

Select an account and click OK

You will see that account name in the bottom pane. Click Next to proceed further.

Now scroll down the list of actions and enable display a Desktop Alert and play a sound (to select different sound for IMAP account).

Under Step 2 click a sound to select different audio file to be played with desktop notification. Once selected click Finish to end the wizard.

It will bring you back to Rules and Alerts dialog show newly added rule. Click OK.

From now on when you will receive email through IMAP account, an alert notification will pop-up.

One thing we noticed is that it will not display the body text during notification, only the sender name and subject will be displayed. For a more customizable email notifications, check out MailAlert add-in.
You can also checkout posts from Outlook 2010 notification series:
For more guides, tips, and tutorials, please visit our sister site Office 2010 Club.
3 Comments
Great Tip, but I hope they fix it in the final release. It getting time for me to upgrade off of Office 2003, but I hate having to do trivial workarounds…
GREAT!!! This was the better tip I read for Outlook and IMAP accounts. I have a problem with IMAP notifications (the envelope icon on tray didnt display and all seems right in config options). Thank you very much, this solves my problem an enhanced mi notifications. All in one.
Unfortunately you can’t set the envelope symbol in the tray by rules! So if you are absent during incoming mail you won’t see the desktop alert.
Unfortunately the second it isn’t fixed in the final. So no constant information about new mails using IMAP. Bad done, Microsoft!
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