getting duplicate emails with Mail app :(

shake said:

hello all,
i have been getting duplicate emails for a while now(17" powerbook 1.5ghz g4, 10.3.5). sometimes i get 12 copies of the same email! i tried trashing the prefs, and that helped for a few days, but it keeps coming back. I also set up and tested my mail account on another machine, and that machine never gets doubles.

has anyon else ever seen this ?

any help is greatly appreciated,
shake

Click to expand...

I sometimes get duplicate Mac Forums Mailer messages, but none of my other mail gets duplicated. Maybe deleting your Mail caches will help? The cache is located in two places:
1. ~/Library/Caches/Mail
2. ~/Library/Mail/(mailboxname).mbox/Caches/

To view #2, you have to control-click the .mbox file and choose "Show Package Contents" from the shortcut menu.

Have you set up the account to delete mail from the server as soon as it's downloaded? That might help. Also, is your system time correct?

I know this sounds like a pain in the butt, but perhaps you could set your email to download manually. Then, once an hour or so, use the browser-based way to get at your email (presumably there is one) to ensure that in fact you only have one of each message (to check that it isn't an ISP issue that just happened to not flare up when you used the other machine). Then manually get your mail. If duplicates show up in a given mail download, it's almost undoubtedly a Mail bug. Once a given group of email has been downloaded, use the browser window again to ensure that there's nothing left on the server. At least this way you should be able to somewhat isolate the problem - mail not getting deleted on the server as opposed to funkiness within Mail.

did you check your Rules? I once accidentally set a rule to perform the action of moving an e-mail to a specified folder AND copying it to that folder as well (which I didn't want) - when I removed the second action (copying) that resolved the issue of getting duplicate e-mails.

My solution

I realize this thread has been dead for a while now, but if anyone else ever stumbles across the same problem, I may have your solution.

It's simpler than you would think.

Check to see if you have two account that are the same. I had two gmail accounts setup in mail. This must have happened when I importrted my settings or synced using mobileme. When using mobileme for the first time, it gives you the options to either merge or replace information on your computer. I'm assuming that if you select "merge," you will end up with two mail accts.

Note: the screenshot included is only for showing you want I'm talking about. the second acct wasn't actually an IMAP acct.

Please see this discussion on Apple's Support Board -

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2133249&start=0&tstart=0

It's an issue some people are having with Snow Leopard.

Have fun ... Tony.

app for finding duplicates?

AuPhalanx said:

Please see this discussion on Apple's Support Board -

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2133249&start=0&tstart=0

It's an issue some people are having with Snow Leopard.

Have fun ... Tony.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the link Tony.

I have these issues since a few days. It might be coincidence, but fits nicely with the other issues, Snow Leopard brought me.

Is there a app for finding duplicate mails, presenting them logically, that let's me pick the one mail, I want to keep and gets rid of the duplicates?

I find myself getting my mails in order too often for my taste lately.

Alas, I too have the same issue. Headed over to the Apple thread and there is not much in the way of solutions.

Pretty disappointing.

This happened to me with only certain .mac e-mails after I went from Tiger to Leopard. Any other workarounds?

This has been very interesting and helpful. I just started getting dups after setting up a new mail server. running Snow lep for about 4 months and this issue of dups started after hooking up to new mail server.
They are not really dups, its just they are indexed twice and if I delete one they both disappear. A rebiuld of the box clears the issue for the moment but it starts again after awhile.

Im currently letting my mac mail rest for an hour after deleting the index file.
I run IMAP so the hour is to let the server finish out any processes it might be running on that mail account.

I will post my conclusion in 24 hours to see if that fixed it.
jason

Well it didnt take long for that to NOT work.

Complete new index and dups in my inbox.
I may try to have it rebiuld the MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3 , But I havent read more than that " should " have fixed it.

I may have one last trick up my sleeve.
jason

getting duplicate emails with Mail app

check out http://www.araxis.com/find-duplicate-files/

there is a free trial period with full use of app.

duplicate emails

As a dot mac subscriber with an email ending @mac.com I was automatically added an account email with the new @me.com. I now have the 2 email accounts through Apple and so mail sent to one account is automatically generated to both accounts. That seems to be why I am getting duplicates....but what to do about it is beyond me!

Similar Problem

I am having a problem with duplicate e-mails. I used to have Mac Mail set up on my iPhone and then a POP set up in my Mac Mail desktop. Now, I have a Macbook Pro, so I set up the Mac Mail, but it set it up with an IMAP. It's a disaster! I have about 15 copies of every e-mail I send and receive. I put them in the trash, and when I search for something the ones in the trash come up as well as sent mail, all mail, it's a disaster. How can I fix this? I wish I could just go back to POP and just re-check the e-mail rather than have this duplicate e-mail situation on my laptop.

Repetitive emails being sent OUT from my mac mail

I have a client who is receiving the same email over and over for about a month now. He was receiving a couple of other emails I sent him repeatedly as well, but this particular email filled his box up 12 times (so far) today and I originally sent it to him nearly a month ago. He says I am the only person this repeat email problem is happening from. He's driving me nuts with his 10-12 times a day "updates" and pleading with me to take care of the problem. Does anyone know if it's a problem with the MobileMe server? Or an issue with his?

Duplicate EMails using Mail, iPhone, and MobileMe

I had a similar problem with duplicate emails using Mail, iPhone, and MobileMe. There would be 2 of the same message, but only on my iPhone, not my desktop.

The culprit seems to be with MobileMe account being the “middleman”.

Step 1
Check to see if your MobileMe System Preferences are set for automatic updating:
[System Preferences > Internet & Wireless > MobileMe > Sync tab]. The “Synchronize” box should be checked, and the pulldown box set to “Automatically”.

With these settings, MobileMe will automatically sync all of your selections between your desktop and iPhone.

Step 2
So when you connect your iPhone to Sync using iTunes, you need to make sure that the options under the “Info” tab are DESELECTED (Sync Address Book, Calendars, Mail). After all, if MobileMe is set to sync automatically you don’t need this, right? So uncheck these and remember to punch the “Sync” button on the bottom of the screen to activate your changes.

Step 3
Reboot your iPhone and send yourself a test email from your desktop. Should have a beautiful single message.

I hope this may also help troubleshoot other duplicate email issues.

Use IMAP instead of POP to retrieve emails

oeokillertofu said:

I am having a problem with duplicate e-mails. I used to have Mac Mail set up on my iPhone and then a POP set up in my Mac Mail desktop. Now, I have a Macbook Pro, so I set up the Mac Mail, but it set it up with an IMAP. It's a disaster! I have about 15 copies of every e-mail I send and receive. I put them in the trash, and when I search for something the ones in the trash come up as well as sent mail, all mail, it's a disaster. How can I fix this? I wish I could just go back to POP and just re-check the e-mail rather than have this duplicate e-mail situation on my laptop.

Click to expand...

I finally found the answer to this dubious multiple duplicate emails problem for the 'Mail' app.
Well it worked for me anyway. Instead of using POP, use IMAP to retrieve emails from the server.

I had to remove/delete the mail account first then recreate it. Where the application automatically uses POP in the drop down, change it to IMAP. The rest is based on your login information.

Hope this helps.

Below is an excerpt from this link:http://help.joyent.com/index.php?id=67&pg=kb.page

IMAP vs. POP

The basic difference between IMAP and POP3 is that with POP3 you work most of the time offline because you only connect to the server to download new mail to your computer. This means you have to check your server mailbox periodically. Access from multiple computers/clients is possible by leaving your new mail on the server, but problematic. IMAP, on the other hand, allows you to always work with your mail live on the server. This means that a connection is made and typically maintained through your entire email session. To save bandwidth, messages viewed once are cached on your computer and you can also set up synchronization to store permanent copies of messages locally. Second, IMAP allows you to work with an unlimited number of folders, which can be nested, all of them being stored on the server, always accessible from any computer in the world. This allows to shift all email filters and Spam handling to your email server (see Procmail and Spamassassin).

Basically, IMAP is recommended for a modern email use, unless contraindicated by very special circumstances (e.g. a limited and expensive Internet connection). ###

For me, it was just a matter of :
+ In Gmail :
- Checking the System "Sent messages [ ] Show in IMAP" label (not sure if this is the right label in EN because my interface is FR)
- Unchecking the System "All messages [ ] Show in IMAP"
- Unchecking the "Sent messages [ ] Show in IMAP"
+ In Mail.app :
- Unchecking "Store messages on the server" (as this is automatically done if your SMTP is gmail, otherwise leave it checked).

Hope this helps, it works for me...

Araxis is not for Mail.app

tdstout said:

check out http://www.araxis.com/find-duplicate-files/

there is a free trial period with full use of app.

Click to expand...

not for mail.app!

Complete Archive of Gmail - 30,000 messages

To protect my privacy from Google, I archived all 1gb of 30,000 Gmail messages from 2004 on using POP. I was not able to get all that history from IMAP.

I archived them in Mail.app, sampled the archive using attachment views and other tests and confirmed everything was copied. Then, I deleted them on Gmail's server, keeping just 6 months of my data instead of 8 years.

Due to my own error, there are some duplicates in the archive which I didn't noticed until I saw the little 'there is one duplicate' link in the message window.

Is there a utility to remove these programatically? I have already tried the rebuild command in mail.app.

Thanks,

Doug

Emails duplicated in Mail

I was having a problem with mail duplicating after I went onto Mobile Me to find an email. I suddenly had 4,000 emails flooding into my Mail App on my computer.

I rang Applecare and they said it was because iCloud was having transition problems. He told me to:

- Go to Mail
- Go to Mailbox on top toolbar
- Click Rebuild at the bottom

This will prevent it from happening again, but you may have to delete some duplicate emails that are still there.

Hope this helps anyone with similar problems.