chakars said:
I have my outlook setup on two separate machines to download mail from
my
pop3 mail server, but leave the mail on the server too.
However, on one I have issues with the server address being changed to
localhost and on the other it is downloading multiple copies of the
same
message manytimes over.
thanks
The mail server setting getting changed to "localhost" is a behavior of
old anti-virus programs that do not run as transparent proxies. If you
want your e-mail scanned for viruses (althougth the on-access scanner
should provide sufficient protection) then get used to your AV software
changing your mail settings or get a different AV program that doesn't
touch them.
Up your poll interval. If it is too short, the messages being retrieved
in one mail poll may be seen by a subsequent mail poll if it starts
before the first mail poll completed. Don't be setting mail polls to
just a minute apart. You are wasting lots of resources on the server
for very little change in status of your mailbox. Set the poll interval
to 5, 15, or more minutes. The more accounts you are polling
concurrently the longer should be your polling interval.
Also try disabling e-mail scanning by your anti-virus software.
Norton's, for example, has a timeout prevention feature where it will
add a header in the data stream sent to the e-mail client to prevent it
from timing out when an e-mail is huge (and the AV software has to take
time to scan it and the large attachments). If there is an option in
the AV software to prevent timeouts, enable it. Otherwise, try
disabling e-mail scanning to see if that helps.
I have also seen Outlook (well, actually the mail server) get stuck on
delivering an e-mail. Something in its content screws up the mail
server from finishing its delivery and Outlook hangs waiting and
eventually times out. However, Outlook isn't like many other e-mail
clients where delivery of one e-mail updates the download list and
changes status on the mail server for that delivered e-mail. Instead
Outlook waits until ALL messages have been downloaded and then tells the
mail server to delete the message. If one message hangs Outlook then
all those messages remain on the server including those that have
already been successfully downloaded. On Outlook's next mail poll, all
those messages are still there (because Outlook didn't delete them one
at a time) and downloads them all over again. You have to use the
webmail interface to your e-mail account (or telnet into it) and delete
the problematic message to get Outlook to complete getting all e-mails
so it can then delete them from the server. However, you probably have
Outlook configured to leave messages on the mail server, anyway.
You are trying to read a POP3 account from different hosts. Each
Outlook will then keep a record of the message IDs of the e-mails it
downloaded so it won't download them again. However, you are running
two separate instances of Outlook so each will have a different list of
already downloaded message IDs. Maybe that's what you mean by
duplicated messages (i.e., a message that you read in one instance of
Outlook won't show up again in THAT instance of Outlook but it will show
up in the OTHER instance of Outlook which has its own separate list of
already downloaded message IDs). Each instance of Outlook is not going
to sync with some other instance of Outlook regarding their list of
already downloaded message IDs. Check the advanced settings under your
POP3 accounts. If you have the "Leave a copy of message on the server"
enabled, what sub-options do you have enabled and what are their
settings? You might try playing with those settings to see if behavior
changes to not duplicating your messages (which presumably meant you got
duplicated messages within the SAME instance of Outlook).
Microsoft has reported a similar problem at
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=284404. I have 6 POP3 accounts defined
in Outlook 2002 and do not get duplicated e-mails, so it is likely that
the environment under which Outlook is running is triggering the
problem. Microsoft doesn't seem to have the best graceful recovery for
errors so anything that is interrogating the data stream to Outlook
might be causing the problem, like anti-virus or anti-spam software.
