Why are recipients receiving multiple copies of email?

[Guest]

When I send an email from Outlook 2003 and there is two or more recipients in
the "TO" address, each recipient recieves multiple copies of the same email,
why?

 

[F. H. Muffman]

When I send an email from Outlook 2003 and there is two or more recipients
in
the "TO" address, each recipient recieves multiple copies of the same
email,
why?

What type of mail server?
Do you have multiple sent items in your Sent Items folder?
Does each recipient receive the same number of copies?
Is that same number of copies equal to the number of recipients on the mail?

 

[Guest]

My sent items only show one item. This morning I sent one email to 4
recipients they each received 3, I also sent an email to 3 recipeints they
each received 2, I sent an email to 2 recipients they each received 2. This
only happens in Outlook when I use Smarter Mail it does not happen. I have
searched and searched for answers and can not figure it out. (HELP)

 

[Brian Tillman]

When I send an email from Outlook 2003 and there is two or more
recipients in the "TO" address, each recipient recieves multiple
copies of the same email, why?

Make sure you are NOT scanning outgoing mail with your antivirus program and
try lengthening your account's server timeout value.

 

[Mirjana Bugarcic]

I have a very similar problem. I often send mails to four people on the same domain, where one of them is in To, and the other three are in Cc. They ALL get four copies of the mail. As there is usually an attachment in the mail, I do not have to tell you how much this bothers them.

They claim they have never had such a problem with anyone else, and no one else has ever reported such problem when I send a mail to multiple addresses.

When I use webmail, they all get one copy, which means the problem is in Outlook.

My antivirus does not scan outgoing messages.

I have no clue what the solution is. Any ideas?

 

[F. H. Muffman]

I have a very similar problem. I often send mails to four people on the
same domain,
where one of them is in To, and the other three are in Cc. They ALL get
four copies
of the mail. As there is usually an attachment in the mail, I do not have
to tell you how
much this bothers them.

Does it ever happen when there isn't an attachment? Does it happen if you
only mail three of them?

They claim they have never had such a problem with anyone else, and no one
else
has ever reported such problem when I send a mail to multiple addresses.

When I use webmail, they all get one copy, which means the problem is in
Outlook.

Not necessarily. Web based mailing uses a completely different system which
doesn't even look like email traffic to any locally installed programs on
your machine that might be playing fast and loose, such as...

My antivirus does not scan outgoing messages.

What program is it? Does it have any hooks into Outlook? Have you ever
*not* had this problem? What type of mail server are you working with,
exchange, pop/imap?

 

[F. H. Muffman]

My sent items only show one item. This morning I sent one email to 4
recipients they each received 3, I also sent an email to 3 recipeints they
each received 2, I sent an email to 2 recipients they each received 2.
This
only happens in Outlook when I use Smarter Mail it does not happen. I have
searched and searched for answers and can not figure it out. (HELP)

Well, like Brian said, try disabling any email functionality of your
Anti-Virus softwares. If you go into your Sent Items folder and pull up the
properties of one of the messages, what is the size of the message?

 

[Mirjana Bugarcic]

Does it ever happen when there isn't an attachment? Does it happen if you only mail three of them?

Yes, it happens always, no matter whether there is an att. or not. When some of them has an automatic reply, like "I won't be in the office", I get it as many times as there are recipients, as the person gets as many mails from me. If I mail 3 of them, they get 3 copies. If I mail 5 of them, each gets 5!

What program is it? Does it have any hooks into Outlook? Have you ever *not* had this problem? What type of mail server >are you working with, exchange, pop/imap?

It is AVG Free Edition. I have this problem ONLY with these guys, I don't know whether the reason is that they are all on the same domain (they are a company I work with). When I send a mail to multiple receipents no one gets multiple copies, although many of them may be on e.g. yahoo or gmail. The mail server is pop3, and AVG is connected with Outlook (btw. it is Outlook 2003) but the option "scan outgoing messages" is disabled.

If you go into your Sent Items folder and pull up the
properties of one of the messages, what is the size of the message?

The size is OK - the same as the attachment and a bit more.

 

[F. H. Muffman]

It is AVG Free Edition. I have this problem ONLY with these guys,
I don't know whether the reason is that they are all on the same domain
(they are a company I work with). When I send a mail to multiple
receipents
no one gets multiple copies, although many of them may be on e.g. yahoo or
gmail. The mail server is pop3, and AVG is connected with Outlook
(btw. it is Outlook 2003) but the option "scan outgoing messages" is
disabled.

'They are a company I work with'. If they are the only people you are able
to reproduce the problem with, I'm really tempted to say that they are where
the problem is, or, more to the point, a server between you and them.

Does that company manage their own internet services? You may need to ask
them to help you contact their IT department to help troubleshoot the
problem. What you'd want to find out from them is, when you send a message,
is their server receiving multiple copies of the message from the server you
handed it to, or is it only receiving one.

What it sounds like, since the recipients get as many copies as are
recipients on the mail is an old problem that I remember with the SBS POP3
Connector for Exchange.

Basically, here's what happened with that problem and how email works in
general.

When you send a message to a list of users, there are two parts to that
message, one is the envelope, the other is the message itself, which
includes the header (the subject, the date, the time, the To, the CCs (these
last two are important)).

The envelope is the part that the servers use to determine whose mailboxes
to put things in, the To and CCs don't actually enter into it.

So, the server says I have a message for user1, and puts it in user1's
mailbox. Then it says I have a message for user2 and puts it in user2's
mailbox, and so on. Now, ISPs would dump User1-5's mail into a single
mailbox for the pop3 connector to come and get, so remember that it just got
5 messages in this global mailbox.

The POP connector comes in and polls that global mailbox and says 'ok, I
have a message for User1, User2, User3... and on to 5.' Then, since it
didn't care about duplicate content, it picks up the next message, which is
exactly the same, and delivers it to user1-5.

So, in the end, each user got the same number of messages that were sent to
users on that domain, which sounds exactly like what you're seeing here.

I vaguely recall that you said it doesn't happen if you send them mail using
a different mail client? I might be mistaken, but since you trimmed the
thread out, I'm not sure. Is that other client connecting to the same POP
server you're using in Outlook?

 

[Brian Tillman]

When I use webmail, they all get one copy, which means the problem is
in Outlook.

This is NOT a valid conclusion. Web mail and SMTP mail could very well use
different servers on the ISP end of things.