Mail keeps resending emails

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Level 1

4 points

Mail keeps resending emails

Ok, this will be a little hard to explain but my mac mail will take old emails that I have already sent and resend them. One person the other day told me she got my same email 3 times.

It will also take emails that were sent to me, put them in my outbox and send them, which really confuses me because I am not sure how they are being resent to me from my own email. However, if I delete the message that is in my outbox it deletes it from my sent/recieved folders. I also have multiple email addresses so this is not just my servers fault.

Can anyone help?

ibook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Aug 22, 2007 7:47 AM

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Answer 1

ecarmody

Level 1

0 points

Aug 27, 2007 6:19 PM in response to mbforma

I am having the exact same problem...it just started doing this about two weeks ago. It's getting really frustrating! Does anyone have any ideas?

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Answer 2

Aug 30, 2007 4:59 PM in response to mbforma

Yes -- Please help! See also: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1099469

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Answer 3

ecarmody

Level 1

0 points

Aug 30, 2007 6:33 PM in response to mbforma

A random thought -- this seem to have started when started syncing my iPhone.....anyone else?
I also deleted the envelope index -- that seems to help...hopefully the problem won't return.

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Answer 4

Aug 31, 2007 4:43 AM in response to mbforma

This problem is caused by some index corruption (which in turn might be caused by some filesystem corruption) that makes messages to randomly appear in a mailbox different from where they’re supposed to be. If that mailbox happens to be Outbox, Mail thinks the messages are waiting to be sent and dutifully proceeds to try to send them.

Verify/repair the startup disk (not just permissions), as described here:

The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?

After having fixed all the filesystem issues, if any, and ensuring that there’s enough space available on the startup disk (a few GB, plus the space needed to make a backup copy of the Mail folder), try this:

1. Quit Mail if it’s running.

2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/. Make a backup copy of this folder, just in case something goes wrong, e.g. by dragging it to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down. This is where all your mail is locally stored.

3. Locate Envelope Index and move it to the Trash. If you see any other “Envelope Index”-named file there, delete it as well.

4. Open Mail. It will tell you that your mail needs to be “imported”. Click Continue and Mail will proceed to re-create Envelope Index — Mail says it’s “importing”, but it just re-creates the index if the mailboxes are already in Mail 2.x format.

Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. That is, ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder, i.e. /Users/username/Library.

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