Outlook 2007 + POP3 = catastrophe (for me)

[zumbooruk]

So I just started playing with Office 2007 a few days ago, very excited
to use the new Outlook, got all set to switch over from Thunderbird at
last... but here's the deal. I configure 4 different POP3 account to
each download themselves to different subfolders of inbox, named for
their own accounts. Fair, right? I set Outlook to start downloading
them (had time to wait, didn't feel like exporting via. OE from T-bird)
and it takes my RCN and personal accounts fine, but won't touch my
Gmail. Whatever, I can handle that--i'll just do a gmail forward.

The problem arose when I set it to downloading my school e-mail, which
is run from an exchange server (but without exchange functionality). So
I'm just downloading the pop3 messages, great stuff. Pulls down 2200
messages, I sort them out, leave 1600 and mark them all as read. Go to
sleep. Today, Outlook decided it wanted to download everything all over
again.

Everything.

It didn't matter if I changed the download folder to Inbox, or
anything. I could stop the download partway through, start it again,
and it would instantly begin again at the very beginning of all the
emails. It didn't care how many duplicates it made.

Help, what can I do? This makes Outlook unusable for me, but I really
want to be able to use beta 2... solution?

 

[Zumbooruk]

Oh and I'm on XP and the servers are all SSL, but everything is set
identically to thunderbird which is happy.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Make sure you have disabled all your add-ins for this pre-release. These
will require updating to be compatible with Outlook 2007.
Also see http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/duplicates.htm

--
Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
Coauthor, Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003


-----
So I just started playing with Office 2007 a few days ago, very excited
to use the new Outlook, got all set to switch over from Thunderbird at
last... but here's the deal. I configure 4 different POP3 account to
each download themselves to different subfolders of inbox, named for
their own accounts. Fair, right? I set Outlook to start downloading
them (had time to wait, didn't feel like exporting via. OE from T-bird)
and it takes my RCN and personal accounts fine, but won't touch my
Gmail. Whatever, I can handle that--i'll just do a gmail forward.

The problem arose when I set it to downloading my school e-mail, which
is run from an exchange server (but without exchange functionality). So
I'm just downloading the pop3 messages, great stuff. Pulls down 2200
messages, I sort them out, leave 1600 and mark them all as read. Go to
sleep. Today, Outlook decided it wanted to download everything all over
again.

Everything.

It didn't matter if I changed the download folder to Inbox, or
anything. I could stop the download partway through, start it again,
and it would instantly begin again at the very beginning of all the
emails. It didn't care how many duplicates it made.

Help, what can I do? This makes Outlook unusable for me, but I really
want to be able to use beta 2... solution?

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

if you have a mailbox with a huge # of messages on the server it often has a
problem marking what's already been downloaded. To help, set the check every
xx time to a very large number until the messages are downloaded then lower
it to no less than 8 - 10 min. If all your accounts have several hundred
messages, try adding one account at a time and add the next once the first
has downloaded everything. If you are just moving messages by account and
have 'stop processing' enabled in each rule, they are not the cause of the
dupes.

 

[Zumbooruk]

Didn't have any add-ins to disable, did a clean install of 2007. It
wasn't even using the old profile. Trying every one of those
possibilities you linked, including remaking the entire profile. we'll
see if that works.

 

[Zumbooruk]

Tried all of those things, no change. No matter what new .pst or folder
I specify, the same happens--it starts from the very beginning.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

If none of those suggestions help, you can always sit tight till the
next beta release (b2TR). It will be a patch for B2 and news speculation
has it out soon and to the public.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Zumbooruk]

That might do the trick... as a last-ditch effort I'm ripping every
message off the server and seeing if outlook just couldn't handle the
size. Very disappointing, anyways, since Thunderbird was relaxed about
it all.

 

[Zumbooruk]

Oh, look: Outlook won't even delete the messages off the server. Anyone
had any problems with THAT before?

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

outlook marks the messages after it downloads them so a huge number can be a
problem. Because of the way mapi does it (which is different than a simple
client like thunderbird or OE), anything that interrupts the connection can
prevent outlook from marking them as downloaded then deleted.

If it's not deleting them when there are just a few, check the leave on
server settings in tools, accounts. Delete from server is the default.

 

[Zumbooruk]

That might explain it right there then, perhaps. I think my internet
connection might have been hiccuping a little bit. That still makes me
wonder why it was able to download them without trouble the -first-
time, but I will try to let it run through once more and see if that
solves the problem. Oddly it is also taking an exorbitantly long time
to pull them down--also related to mapi? About 48 megs of e-mail, 2200
messages or so, takes it approximately 7 hours. This is on a perfectly
good high speed connection.

I'll report back in 7 hours, ha.

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

That seems to be a bit *too* slow, but yes, mapi is slower than thunderbird
or oe.

 

[Zumbooruk]

I deleted all but 475 by hand in exchange webmail (ugh) and left the
rest to be downloaded; it downloaded all 475 / 475 but then was waiting
and waiting. End result: failure.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Does the server support IMAP? If yes, it might be worth trying that one.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Zumbooruk]

I wish. I begged IT to implement it when they moved to the new
server-side stuff last fall, but they just said "POP only. No SMTP."
Giving it another go, now with only 150 e-mails left. I've removed more
than 2000 emails by hand today, so I'm well on my way to carpal tunnel
but still no where closer to having Outlook behave.

 

[Zumbooruk]

Hey everyone, it seems to work now, even if it is very slow. This is
now that it's down to 3 total messages. I think I'm going to go cry
myself to sleep.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Did you mean "No IMAP"?

Patrick Schmid