Computer help forum: Receiving duplicate email msgs in Outlook from POP3 server

Leaving them on the server for any length of time can cause such duplicated mail receipts.

ON this machine which has Outlook 2002, (your's may be similar) open Outlook, click on "Tools", choose "Email Accounts", choose "Change or edit and existing account", highlight your POP3 account, then click on the "Change" button.. When that opens, click on the "More Settings" button, then the "Advanced" button. UNCHECK the box that says: "Leave a copy of message on the server". OK and Apply your way out.

Hope this helps.

Grif

if you leave messages on the server, every client somehow "remembers" what he downloaded and what he didn't yet (a simple time-stamp maybe, or something more involving). So it shouldn't happen that the same message is downloaded twice to the same machine. I can't find the details at the moment.

http://archive.respread.com/559-6921/noclone.newsletter/Similar_files;_Duplicate_Outlook_emails seems to be a program to delete duplicate mails. Might be useful if you can't sort this out. And another one: http://www.systweak.com/PST/overview.asp. And another one: the delete duplicates program mentioned in http://www.slipstick.com/emo/2005/up050414.htm

Hope this helps.


Kees

The simplest and easiest solution to this problem, is for you to simply get another email account. One for you, one for your wife. Google's Gmail is still offering free POP3 access, though for how long is anyone's guess. I also think you can access Hotmail accounts using Outlook still. You can also see how much a second account would cost from your ISP. Most give up to like 5 as part of the base package price, but it should be pretty nominal.

Another sort of round about solution, is to run your own web based mail program. Have it suck down the email from your ISP's server, then you and your wife can access your own private webmail system. You could get some cheap system off ebay, install Linux on it, and use something like Usermin and fetchmail. Using something like Webmin, it should be trivially easy to set up and configure.

You could also set up your own IMAP server as an alternative... Something like fetchmail pulls it down from the ISP, dumps it into the local IMAP server's mailbox, and then you can access it that way.

I have been researching this topic for the last 3 months looking for a free solution. Outlook 2003 came out with a hotfix (included in SP2 I think) that fixed this issue, but 2007 does not have a fix yet that I can find. I just recently switched to a MacBook and have Outlook 2010. This version does not have the duplicate email issue.

Anyways, my wife is still on Outlook 2007 (PC) with messages being pulled from her POP3 MSN/Live account. This is on her work computer so she doesn't ever bring it home. Because of the duplicate issue, I have the "leave on server" option unchecked, but then Outlook pulls all messages off the server. She was unable to see any messages on her computer at home or her smart phone.

My solution: I created a new Live email account for her (the existing account being xxxxxxxxx@live.com and the new one being xxxxxxxx2@live.com) and forwarded emails from her first account to this new account. I set up the new email on her smart phone and home computer and now she can see all her emails at both locations. The only difference in the email address is the "2" so it isn't a big deal if she replies from that one. I am not sure about other POP3 providers, but with MSN forwarded messages between accounts with the same "domain" (i.e. msn.com, live.com, hotmail.com) show up normally and not with fwd:xxxxx in the subject line. It looks as though it came straight from the sender to that account even though it was forwarded.

The only issue would be if someone responded to her xxxxxxxxx2@live.com account because she wouldn't see it on her work machine, but she carries her smart phone everywhere so she would be able to see it and respond on there if need be.

It isn't perfect, but it was an easy and free option that works. Regardless Microsoft needs to release a fix like they did for 2003.