Outlook downloads multiple copies of EMAIL

[Chuck]

I have Outlook (2003) setup on my laptop (XP-Pro SP2) with our Exchange
Server at the office. I also have an Outlook account setup to POP my
personal email account. I have the flag set on the POP account to leave a
copy of the message on the server so that I can download and save important
messages on my home PC.

Occasionally and randomly, Outlook will download a copy of EMAILS from the
POP server and the next time I Send/Receive it will download multiple copies
of the same email. It's almost as if Outlook looses track of what has been
downloaded.

I don't think this is a server problem since I don't have that problem if I
use Outlook Express.

Any ideas on troubleshooting this problem?

 

[Sanjay Singh]

My understanding of how this works is ...

Every time you download messages in Outlook, it will download all messages
from your server. If you leave them on the server and then download again,
they will be downloaded again.

Also I have found that if e-mails are only partly downloaded (due to
connection drop-off etc), the next time you try and download, all the
e-mails from the previous download will be downloaded again.

Sanjay Singh

 

[Brian Tillman]

Every time you download messages in Outlook, it will download all
messages from your server. If you leave them on the server and then
download again, they will be downloaded again.

That's not usual. Whether or not you leave messages on the server should
have no effect on whether or not they get duplicated. The client is
supposed to build a list identifying what it's downloaded so far and skip
those same messages if they're still on the server. It certainly works that
way for me.

 

[Chuck Duchon]

I agree with Brian. The fact that this problem occurs intermittently tells
me that it's not "normal". I searched Google Groups and found that a lot of
people have this problem but there was not one clear resolution.

Any other ideas?

 

[Brian Tillman]

I agree with Brian. The fact that this problem occurs intermittently
tells me that it's not "normal". I searched Google Groups and found
that a lot of people have this problem but there was not one clear
resolution.

I have heard of this problem when the Send/Receive interval is set too low.
What happens is that one Send/Receive task starts, begins to download the
messages and, before it gets to the point where it has completed that
process and generated the downloaded messages map, another Send/Receive
tasks starts and sees those messages still not recorded as downloaded, so
downloads them again. Meanwhile, the first task finishes and records the
messages as downloaded. The third Send/Receive task starts, but sees the
messages marked as downloaded and ends. Then the second task ends and again
marks them as downloaded. So you wind up with duplicates. If the timing is
(in)correct, you can get triplicates, or even worse. Given a decent
Send/Receive interval, this won't happen.