Hi,
I have a nasty problem with KMail. I have managed to connect it to my organization’s Microsoft Exchange server to use it for receiving and sending Office 365 mail. However, it only fetches mail when triggered manually to check mail.
The resource is shown as “ready” in the accounts tab. It does not matter whether the retrieval option in the “Advanced” tab in the “Receiving” settings is set to poll by some interval, or “Use streaming notifications”. Either way the emails are not received.
Periodically the resource also goes offline for a short while, and I get a notification that the resource stopped working. However, it returns soon to the “ready” state. Also restarting the resource returns it to “ready” state.
Emails are always received when a manual “check mail” is triggered.
I’m running a very fresh Fedora 42 KDE spin, with little to no customization.
Help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks for the reply. What do you refer to specifically by KMail “account sync settings”? The only sync settings I can find are shown in this image. Neither of the retrieval options work, both require manual triggering to retrieve mail. The status tab shows “OK”. I have not made any other configuration changes after adding the exchange account.
It does not feel like a network or firewall issue as other apps that continuously poll for messages work just fine, with no extra configuration.
Did you ever get to the bottom of this? I’ve been having exactly the same issue for ages now… seems as though it can only be a bug because surely interval mail checking should be the same as initiating a manual check but at regular intervals? OTOH if it IS a bug it’s odd that everyone isn’t complaining 
Same problem here, using version 4:25.08.1 in Kubuntu 25.10.
Unfortunately not, it was the same last time I checked, months ago. Pretty soon I abandoned KMail for Thunderbird. I didn’t see any point in using the K-suite, as Merkuro calendar was equally buggy for me, failing to show even .ics subscriptions reliably, never mind work with the exchange calendar.
What’s funny is that on Thunderbird the exchange integration manages to fetch mail, but not send notifications for them, even though calendar notifications work, and notifications for all other software. Oh well, at least we have FOSS software in the first place.
Ultimately, the only one that works well for me for everything with Exchange is Evolution (email, calendar, contacts, and notifications). It sometimes freezes or is slow, but it covers everything. Thunderbird also does a great job, but between Evolution and Thunderbird, I think I prefer the former.
The thing is, I recently switched from GNOME to KDE and I’m trying to use applications that integrate better aesthetically with the system. So it’s a shame, because otherwise, KMail, when it works, can be a fantastic client. And same for Kontact in general.
Aside from that, yes, it’s great to have FOSS software to choose from! I have high hopes for Merkuro Mail, but it seems like it still needs a lot of development before it’s truly usable.
I actually really like KMail - I’ve used it for many, many years and to me the way it’s laid out generally and all of the options it has are just great… not found anything to replace it ( especially since I also have local folder mail from two decades ago still in there! ) I’ve tried Thunderbird and Evolution but really didn’t get on with them.
This all makes it really frustrating for me that there’s such a seemingly simple bug not being fixed - but ultimately as you say it’s FOSS, and I’m grateful to everyone who’s made the whole thing ( KMail, KDE, Linux…. ) available and the reality is it’s people’s free time ( generally ) that gets used to build this stuff. I really haven’t had the time to look to see if I could fix it myself, and haven’t even looked to see if an official bug report exists/create one if not, so it would be slightly hypocritical to complain too much!!!
I have been experiencing this more or less ever since kmail introduced support for ews. There is a bug about it going back to 2021 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=443272 .
Unfortunately I have to use an exchange email for work, and I have found this bug severe enough that I cannot use kmail. I have missed a number of time sensitive emails because it looks like mail is being fetched, and then I check manually and find I am hours behind important stuff. I find it so unreliable that basically it is non-functional for me.
I like the idea kde had of adopting an app a while back. I wonder if they might be persuaded to expand on that so that more than five people could adopt apps, like kmail, to show support for things that we would love to use, if only they were shown some love. I used kmail for over ten years very happily, but now I have to use Thunderbird, which is very good, but personally I would go back to kmail in a heartbeat if it worked reliably with exchange.
