how are multiple downloads of email messages prevented?

[Fred Marshall]

How does the handshaking work so that Outlook Express / Outlook / etc. don't
display the same message in the Inbox more than once - when there is a
history of multiple connections to a POP server?

Which side has the role of deciding when a message header or message needs
to be downloaded? Is it the client or the server?

I'm trying to resolve a new problem where a number of clients on a network
are only recently multiple instances of emails in their Inbox. I'm working
with the ISP mail server folks to resolve the problem and am having a tough
time figuring where to focus the effort.

Thanks,

Fred

 

[Paul]

I'm not sure how the magic works, but in Outlook Express you can go to Tools

Options > Maintenance - Troubleshooting and log the Mail server

transactions. The only time I've seen duplicate messages is when the
session with the mail server is ended prematurely for some reason. It would
appear to be on the safe side, OE redownloads and displays the messages
again until it gets a complete known good session with the mail server.

Another thing to check is if your Inbox.dbx (or Deleted Items) is over 2GB
in size, there's a nasty bug in OE that corrupts the indexes and strange
things start happening.

-- Paul

 

[Fred Marshall]

OK - it turned out that Norton Antivirus update of 12/8 had a problem. Mail
getting was continually being interrupted. So, maybe one message would get
through and then it would die and sometimes nothing would get through.

I take it that the client has the responsibility for deciding when to
download a message from the server. That makes sense. Otherwise the server
would have to keep track of all the clients.

Thanks,

Fred

 

[Richard G. Harper]

The client decides whether to download and delete the message from the
server, or download and leave the message. So you'd need to check the
settings in Outlook or Outlook Express.

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