Outlook Duplicate Emails

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ac1

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Hi
I have done lots of research on this issue, and have tried many suggestions and cannot get this to work. Sorry if this post is too long, didn't want to leave anything out.

I have a client who runs a small business who has about 5 staff. Recently they changed their ISP and since then they are experiencing problems with their email. They have 3 computers with that issue, and I fixed 2/3 of them by just changing the settings and port for the outgoing mail server. However one computer is still not working.

This computer has four email accounts in outlook 2007 setup like this but somehow acccount (aa@test.com) is getting duplicate emails i.e. two of every email. These are all POP3 accounts

aa@test.com
bb@test.com
aa@test2.com
bb@test2.com

I have tried unchecking the "Leave messages from the server" but this did not work. I also checked all the rules/alerts settings, addons and all mails settings are correct.

I then performed a diagnosis by removing account (aa@test2.com). After I did that then (aa@test.com) does not receive duplicate emails and the problem is fixed. As sonn as I add the account (aa@test2.com) the problem comes again.

After further expection I realised that when I send/receive (aa@test.com) I get one copy of the email. However the strange thing is that when I send/receive (aa@test2.com) I get a second copy of the email, which shouldn't be happening.

Anyone had experience with this? Maybe I am missing something easy? I hope this is not too confusing?

Thanks in advance
 
Last edited:
Have you checked for mail forwarding entries ?

I had a similar experience and it turned out the client had a mail forward setting at the ISP to forward one email to another
 
TechguyUK said:
Have you checked for mail forwarding entries ?

I had a similar experience and it turned out the client had a mail forward setting at the ISP to forward one email to another
Click to expand...

Not yet, but I presumed that might be an issue. So I have already told the client to contact their mail service provider to check on monday during work hours.

Given this occurred after the client changed their ISP for internet, makes this seem quite strange? Right?
But the accounts related to the duplicates have different domain names(@test, @test2)?
 
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Backup the PST (or multiple PSTs if it's setup that way)
Remove the entire Outlook profile
Rebuild from scratch
Import PST(s).

Look for a better method to handle/consolidate their e-mail. Working with many different POP accounts...for a business...simply not good, not the grown up approach. POP is for home users. Businesses...migrate to a proper business setup. Hosted Exchange or at the least some Google IMAP.
 
I recently used a great program to clean up Outlook called ODIR. It's free and adds into Outlook. This doesn't help you fix your problem but will be great when it comes time to clean it up.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Backup the PST (or multiple PSTs if it's setup that way)
Remove the entire Outlook profile
Rebuild from scratch
Import PST(s).

Look for a better method to handle/consolidate their e-mail. Working with many different POP accounts...for a business...simply not good, not the grown up approach. POP is for home users. Businesses...migrate to a proper business setup. Hosted Exchange or at the least some Google IMAP.
Click to expand...

Might as well try that as a last resort. Hopefully it may sort out the issue. In regards to a different business setup what do you recommend?
I was considering IMAP before, but some pcs had POP3 and others had IMAP. I might consider IMAP.
In regards to a different business setup what do you recommend?
 
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Duplication is a really common problem when they are storing mail on the server and it's pop3.

Outlook attempts to 'remember' what item it last looked at, but if something changes on the server side somehow, another machine logs into it, the server has a strange response, *anything else happens* - Outlook doesn't realize it's been through the mail thats on the server.

The solution is to stop leaving mail on the server for ALL accounts, OR, if they are using that to 'sync' to other computers - explain that is NOT a solution for pop3, it was not built to do that, and they need to move to a proper account that supports that.

Imap does.. but kind of sucks in Outlook/windows (*edit - really sucks.)

If they are business users, move them to office 365 exchange hosting for like $4/month per mailbox.
 
Thanks for the suggestions to clean up the duplicates. It may come in handy later.

In regards to resolving the issue, I tried setting up the two accounts using IMAP instead of POP 3 and the same issue occurred. I also tried the suggestion of creating a new profile and creating the accounts again, but that did not help either. As mentioned before I unchecked the "Leave messages on server" setting for all accounts, but that made no difference to the issue.
I am thinking that the duplication problem has got something to do with their mail service provider or something to dow with forwarding. I am still waiting for a response from the provider. However the two accounts are associated with two different domain names @test and @test2 etc.

What makes this confusing is the fact that these problems only started happening after the client changed their ISP for their internet. Any ideas?
 
ac1 said:
Might as well try that as a last resort. Hopefully it may sort out the issue. In regards to a different business setup what do you recommend?
I was considering IMAP before, but some pcs had POP3 and others had IMAP. I might consider IMAP.
In regards to a different business setup what do you recommend?
Click to expand...

Hosted Exchange would be ideal for a small setup like this.
Plenty of options available for hosted Exchange depending on what hosts you already may have a relationship with...if none, look at RackSpace or go right do the horses mouth...Microsofts Office 365.

POP is fine for home users....with one or two accounts. Get fancier than that...and you'll soon find many many of the shortcomings of POP3 in a business environment.
 
After reading, I would clean all rules with the comman line switches. I didn't see you try that yet. Never know.

/cleanrules
/cleanserverrules

As well, even though you fixed the ports, I would try a different combination. I have had to play with the ports for outoing and incoming. Charter is notorious for only loving 587.
 
I will consider the business setup advice after I sort out this issue. Thanks YeOldeStonecat.

Thanks Lisa, I will try cleaning the rules through the commandline. I have already tried through Outlook, and recreated the profile.
 
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