I see everything twice (email)

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poadeleted20

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I run Outlook for my email handler, with Mindspring as my email server. Since getting home from Bridgeport on Sunday, and reconnecting via my Comcast high speed internet hookup, every email comes in twice -- two identical copies of each.

Any ideas?
 
The messages were left on the mail server, and for whatever reason your Outlook never marked them as read when in Bridgeport, so when you got home it downloaded all the "new" messages. Might have been something with the ISP in CT.
 
POP or IMAP email? Same computer (laptop) that you were using on the road and at home? Or different computers? Or did you not look at your email at all while you were gone? And if using POP, have you configured Outlook to leave your messages on the server?
 
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I have that happen occasionally with my ISP. I think it is a glitch in their mail server, or they're doing server mx and it affects the "read" flag is not being set properly on message download. It clears up in a day or so. I use Outlook. When it happens I log onto the webmail server directly and delete the duplicates.
 
N2212R said:
The messages were left on the mail server, and for whatever reason your Outlook never marked them as read when in Bridgeport, so when you got home it downloaded all the "new" messages. Might have been something with the ISP in CT.
Click to expand...
Nope -- it's not old messages, only new ones.
 
alaskaflyer said:
POP or IMAP email?
Click to expand...
POP.

Same computer (laptop) that you were using on the road and at home? Or different computers?
Click to expand...
Same laptop.

Or did you not look at your email at all while you were gone?
Click to expand...
Not old messages, only new ones, of which there are two of each.

And if using POP, have you configured Outlook to leave your messages on the server?
Click to expand...
Not to my knowledge -- the two copies come through together when I hit "Send/Receive." Once downloaded, they don't repeat. It's just that when I do download, I get two of each.
 
Ron, do you have any filters set up in Outlook?
 
My first guess (as Bill is angling towards) is that you have a filter or have set up a rule which is running improperly and thus causing the problem.

If that is not so then my next guess would be that you have your server configured to leave copies of messages on it after download, and for some reason Outlook can no longer tell that a message was downloaded previously, probably due to a corrupted message on the server, and is downloading each message a second time.

Try this (warning: you will lose messages saved on the server, though it sounds as though you don't care since you are using the same computer for all your email, and you didn't know whether it was configured to do so anyway ;) )

1. Start Outlook.
2. Click on 'Tools' -> 'Accounts' (or 'Tools' -> 'Services').
3. Select the 'Mail' tab, click on the Mindspring account and click 'Properties'.
4. Select the 'Advanced' tab and uncheck 'Leave a copy of messages on server'. Click 'Apply' and then 'OK'. (If it wasn't checked in the first place then this probably isn't the problem and you can ignore the rest below.)
5. Close the Accounts screen.
6. Press 'Send/Receive'. This will check your messages and remove all old messages from the server – including any corrupted messages. Either send yourself a test message or wait for new mail to arrive to see if you are still getting double messages.

Even if a corrupted message isn't the culprit, I would imagine that unchecking the "leave copy of message on server" box will likely clear up the problem. If it doesn't then the problem is likely with Mindspring's Pop3 server(s).
 
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The "leave a copy" box was not checked. Next idea? BTW, I'm now on the road and it's still happening (I still get every message twice). And I've made no change to my filters.
 
do you have a web interface to your mindspring email? I had that happen with another email account and the web interface showed the messages were actually duplicated on the email server. The explanation was the provider recovered the email system from a crash and during the restore, posted duplicate messages.
 
gkainz said:
do you have a web interface to your mindspring email? I had that happen with another email account and the web interface showed the messages were actually duplicated on the email server. The explanation was the provider recovered the email system from a crash and during the restore, posted duplicate messages.
Click to expand...
This has been going on for days, and includes all new messages.
 
googling mindspring duplicate email messages ...

http://www.smartcomputing.com/edito...5/s1611/42s11/42s11.asp&articleid=28524&guid=

Q: My problem is that all of my incoming email messages are in duplicate. I’m using Outlook Express 6 on a WinXP computer, which has a 1.6GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, and a 40GB hard drive. I have looked at various options in Outlook Express, but I can’t figure out how to avoid receiving messages in duplicate. How can I fix this?

A: Email has become such an integral part of our computer usage that problems like this can quickly exasperate the most patient users among us. Troubleshooting this problem will require a bit of patience on your part, as well as the assistance of your ISP. You didn’t specify what type of email service you’re using, but we’ll assume that it’s POP (Post Office Protocol), the most common variety.

The first step is checking with your ISP to see if you are receiving duplicate messages via the email server. If you find out that your mailbox on the email server has 10 messages, for example, but you receive 20 messages when you download your email, your ISP is probably off the hook for this problem. However, if it looks like your ISP is receiving the duplicates before you even retrieve your email with Outlook Express, you’ll have to depend on one of its employees to troubleshoot the problem.

If the problem doesn’t lie with your ISP, then it’s probably due to a corrupted file that Outlook Express uses. When Outlook Express downloads your email, it also keeps track of which messages it has received and tells the email server to delete the original message. This file that Outlook Express uses to keep track of these details is Pop3uidl.dbx.

Sometimes Pop3uidl.dbx becomes corrupted or damaged and requires that you delete the original file. To do so close Outlook Express and then search for Pop3uidl.dbx by clicking Start, Search, and All Files And Folders. After you type Pop3uidl.dbx in the All Or Part Of The File Name field, be sure to click the button next to More Advanced Options, so you can select the Search Hidden Files And Folders checkbox. When you finish, click the Search button.

In the search results listed in the right pane, right-click Pop3uidl.dbx and click Delete. Then, restart Outlook Express, so it creates a noncorrupt Pop3uidl.dbx version that should prevent duplicate email messages from being delivered to your inbox. Depending on how much email you receive, you may have to periodically recreate this file using the steps we’ve outlined.


and also http://www.webdimension.co.uk/email-setup.html

and a number of other links. Have you contacted mindspring tech support?
 
I think he's using Outlook, not Outlook Express, which uses a different mechanism to track/flag messages. Unfortunately.

Ron, the hammer is to "remove" your Mindspring account in Outlook and then add it again. Really no liability in doing that. Just the annoyance of having to remember your password and POP settings.
 
Ron, try setting up the account as using IMAP protocol rather than POP.

You may look into whether your ISP supports IMAP but you could just try using it. I've found that IMAP can work even if you don't see any documentation for it at the ISP. It uses a different port than POP.

IMAP has advantages over POP. It will sync with all the mailboxes on the server. That means you can have multiple email clients and they all will see the same messages as new, read, replied, deleted, sent, etc.

POP doesn't have that kind of intelligence. It basically reads the whole mail spool and makes a unique ID for each message and assumes ones it hasn't seen before are new ones. That can fail. A sent folder on a given POP client will be local to that client and other clients won't see those messages.

When you check for new message with POP it basically reads all of the messages and sees which ones seem to have new IDs. With IMAP it gets the new messages.

In cases like mine where I leave thousands of messages on the server you can guess it takes a long time for a new client to catch up. With IMAP it's fast.

If you really do have duplicate messages on the server, there's a dupe plug in for Thunderbird that will show you dupes and let you delete them quickly.
 
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