Please fix my work laptop! IT are lost

Elle7

It's a MacBook Air, Mid 2011. Standard set-up, I believe: 1.8GHz Intel Core 7, 4GB DDR3, HD graphics.

It's running OS X 10.9.2, which is Mavericks, I believe. It's a relatively new install - about a month old.

I'm not using it for anything crazy. Mac Outlook (2011) is the most vital, because it's the enforced email system. Other than that, Chrome and the rest of the Office 2011 package.

It does the spinny wheel whenever I receive or send an email, which is driving me a bit insane. I've never had a Mac do this before. IT has taken a long look, but couldn't find anything wrong.

Any suggestions?

Thank you all!

(PS - the spinny wheel happens whether on wi-fi or ethernet, home or work, and regardless of whether I'm using the Mac or not at the time.)

S0litaire

never used a Mac so don't know what the spinney wheel means but I guess it's waiting for something to happen,

First 2 guesses are :-
AntiVirus scanning the MailBox every time you send or recieve something.

Some sort of DNS / Routing problem, it's looking for a connection to a specific server:port and when it can't find it it defaults to the correct connection.

Only thing i can suggest is a good look through all the log files your Mac produces to see if anything pops out