Windows 10 Notification Icon not showing new emails in the Windows 10 built-in Mail Application

Question

_{Thursday, August 18, 2016 6:41 PM}

I've had a periodic issue since Windows 10 was introduced with the Notification Icon in the system tray showing notifications of new mail being available in the built-in Mail application.  Sometimes for reasons unknown, notifications will mysteriously start showing within the notification icon and then just as mysteriously, the notifications will just stop and I have not overtly done anything that I'm aware of to make these notifications start and stop.  I was hoping that this problem would go away with the Anniversary Upgrade but right now I'm not receiving Mail notifications.

Here's what I've done or checked out so far:

I have run SFC and DISM and neither showed a problem with the OS or OS files.

I read that if there was a problem with the mail app that you should reset the app which I did.  I then double checked the mail app and verified that notifications were set to the ON position.  After everything was reset and I restarted my system I saw no change in the notifications for mail.

Someone suggested that for mail notifications to be displayed that the mail app needed to run in the background to send notifications and to remain up to date so I drilled down into Settings/Privacy/Background Apps and found that mail was listed as an app that runs in the background and the switch to turn the app on and off was properly set to the ON position.

Someone else suggested that to get notifications an app also had to be listed in Settings/System/Notifications & Actions.  I checked this list and currently Mail is not on that list however I don't know if this is normal behavior for that app not to appear or not and I did not see a method of adding mail to the list.

I want to mention something else just to make sure that whomever reading this has a complete picture of my situation.  In reality I don't use the Mail app that's available in Windows 10 to read and write email messages.  Instead I use the Outlook 2010 email app as my email client as I have a number of setting that the Mail client simply cannot be configured for.  I have the Mail client in Windows 10 setup specifically so that I get notifications of emails being available on the email server that I use as I don't have Outlook 2010 open all the time.  Having the Mail application watching for new mail being added to my inbox allows me to quickly view the subject header and the sender to determine if there is anything important that I need to read immediately.  Now I'm assuming that running these two applications on the same PC is not an issue but I wanted that fact to be known.

My gut feeling is that there is something somewhere in the system, perhaps a registry key or value that keeps getting flipped from an on position to off and then perhaps some patch from Microsoft turns that value back on for a while until some event turns it back off again.  Bottom line is that this behavior is very frustrating as it's inconsistent.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. 

All replies (7)

_{Wednesday, August 24, 2016 3:25 PM ✅Answered | 1 vote}

OK, I wanted to update this posting as I finally have notifications appearing in the Action Center.  Apparently, my problems were all related to configuration and setup not a specific problem with my system or the Mail application however I did uninstall and reinstall the mail application during this process so it's hard to tell if the reinstall triggered anything or not.  Here's what I do know.

In the MAIL application itself if you click on the gear for settings and you select Manage Accounts you need to select the email account you have a concern with and then select "Change Mailbox Sync Settings".  To get notifications to appear in in the action center and change the notification icon in the system tray you need to make sure that the selection option for "Download New Email" is set to "As items Arrive"  Apparently, this was my problem as somehow during the 1607 Upgrade that selection option got changed to "Every 15 minutes" but I also think this option only works if you have the Mail app open or have opened it during your logon session.  Since I rarely open the Mail app (I use Outlook 2010 as my mail client) this was probably why I felt that the notifications were inconsistent.

In addition to the above I did note an inconsistency that's worth noting.  In the Mail application under Settings -> Notifications you have the option to turn notifications on and to select if you want to display a banner and play a sound.  However, if you open Settings -> System -> Notifications and Actions you will find the Mail application listed with the option to turn notifications on and off.  If you click on the Mail icon within that list you will find additional switches where you can turn the banner and the sound off as well.  What's important to note is that the System setting override whatever settings exist in the application settings as I have the Mail settings configured to show the banner and play a sound however in the system settings I only have the banner turned on.  To me having the same option in two locations where one locations can override another is very confusing so I'm not sure what Microsoft's thought process is in regard to the Mail application.

Anyway, if the moderator views this thread they can mark this reply as the answer.

_{Friday, August 19, 2016 1:37 PM}

Hi,

Have you turned on the Notification settings in Mail app and Get notification from apps and other senders in Windows Settings?

If still not work, we can try to register this app or uninstall and reinstall from Windows store to check the results:

Powershell commands to register the apps:

Get-AppXPackage | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

If not work, remove and reinstall the app to check the results.

Please remember to mark the replies as an answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.
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_{Friday, August 19, 2016 2:01 PM}

Thanks for the reply.

As previously noted, I then double checked the mail app and verified that notifications were set to the ON position.  After everything was reset and I restarted my system I saw no change in the notifications for mail.

Also as previously noted, I have verified that I drilled down into Settings/Privacy/Background Apps and found that mail was listed as an app that runs in the background and the switch to turn the app on and off was properly set to the ON position.

Last night after reading some articles on the internet, I executed Powershell in an Admin Command Windows and used the following command to re-register the Mail application:

Add-AppxPackage -register "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_17.6965.41051.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\appxmanifest.xml" -DisableDevelopmentMode

After the Powershell command ran successfully and after a restart, I used another email account I have to send my primary email account a test me and even after waiting an hour the notification icon in the system tray did not show the mail notification despite the fact that I could confirm on my cell phone that the test message was sitting in my inbox on the mail server.

If the above command was not the correct command to re-register the Mail and Calendar app, please let me know.

_{Friday, August 19, 2016 5:52 PM}

After the previous post I decided that the next step was to uninstall and then reinstall the mail application.  To do that I executed Powershell in an Admin command window and used the following command to uninstall the Mail application:

Remove-AppxPackage microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_17.6965.41051.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

After the Powershell command ran successfully and after a restart I went out to the Store, found the Mail application and reinstalled it.  Once reinstalled I made sure that it was properly configured to use my email account and that notifications were turned on.  After doing so, I have not seen any mail notifications showing up in the action center so apparently, the problem I'm having is NOT related to the Mail application itself so at this point I'm out of things to try.

_{Friday, August 19, 2016 7:55 PM}

Well there are notification settings for Mail in both Settings > System > Notification & actions (normally there), and Mail app Settings > Notifications. So is it on in Mail app? if not turn it on, if yes turn in off and on. Is Mail showing in Settings > System > Notification & actions after the reinstall or disenabling re-enabling in the app?

_{Friday, August 19, 2016 8:27 PM}

I think we might have identified the problem but now the question is how to fix it.

Before I uninstalled the application Mail and Calendar were not showing up within Settings/System/notifications and actions.  After the reinstall Mail and Calendar still were not showing up within Settings/System/Notification and Actions.

I took a look at my laptop that appears to have been providing notifications both before and after the Anniversary Update and found that both Calendar and Mail were both listed within Settings/System/Notifications and Actions.

So the question on the table now is if a reinstall of the Mail/Calendar app will not correctly add Mail and Calendar to Settings/System/Notification and Actions.  Is there some registry hack that can accomplish this task?

_{Wednesday, August 24, 2016 3:29 PM}

Thank you for the update will be helpful to others. You can mark your post as the answer being the thread author.