Outlook PowerShell script does not retrieve latest email - powershell

Question

I have a script that reads an Outlook folder for emails, selects the most recently received email, and saves its attachment into a dir.
It is not working properly - it seems as if it only knows which email to receive if I first open Outlook before running the script - otherwise, it thinks the most recently-received email is the one that was last-received when I had Outlook open last.
Is there some way to prompt Outlook to refresh before the script prompts the scan?
My code is below:
$filepath = $args[0]
$account = $args[1]
<#
#file path
$filepath = "I:\folder"
$account = "account#host.com"
#>
#set outlook to open
$o = New-Object -comobject outlook.application
$n = $o.GetNamespace(“MAPI”)
$Account = $n.Folders | ? { $_.Name -eq $account };
$Inbox = $Account.Folders | ? { $_.Name -match 'Inbox' };
$Data = $Inbox.Folders | ? { $_.Name -match 'Data' };
$f = $Data.Folders | ? { $_.Name -match 'MyTargetFolder' };
$email = $f.Items | Sort-Object ReceivedTime -Descending | Select-Object -First 1
# Log the email we are looking for, and mention attachments if they exist.
Write-Output "Last email received at $($email.receivedtime), attached file(s) are: (if any)"
$email.attachments | %{Write-Output $_.filename}
# If the email has at least one attachment, save them to the filepath.
if ($email.attachments.count -gt 0) {
$email.attachments | %{$_.saveasfile((join-path $filepath $_.filename))}
} else {
Write-Output "Latest email at $($email.receivedtime) has no attachments!"
}

Answer 1

Sounds like you need a
$a.Store | ?{$_.DisplayName -eq $account} | %{If($_.IsCachedExchange){Start-Job {$n.SendAndReceive($false)}|Wait-Job}}
in there to make sure that if it is in Cached mode it will Send & Receive before checking for the email. See Edit note below.
You may also want to make sure that the user isn't in offline mode with a:
If($n.offline){write-host "You must be online before performing this script" -fore red;start-sleep 5;break}
That way if the user is in offline mode it'll display red text stating they need to be in online mode, wait 5 seconds, and then break out of the script.
Edit: Thanks to Adi Inbar it will wait for Outlook to finish its send and receive process before moving on to make sure that you have the latest email cached before moving on. Thanks Adi, I had no idea about that command, it's pretty handy!

Answer 2

Is this a cached (as opposed to online) Exchange store? Try to turn caching off.