Multiple Copies of Emails

Why is this marked as answered? What was the answer? This is very annoying. I am still having this issue

I'm having the same issue with duplicate emails being downloaded. I've tried all the suggestions listed in this thread... no luck. It's sporadic... can go a few days... even weeks... before downloading duplicate emails. Removing the mails from the server is NOT a solution (not even a workaround if you need to access those emails from another client).

I upgraded two Macs (Macbook Pro and iMac) from Leopard to Snow Leopard. Only the iMac is having issues with duplicate downloads (same mail accounts setup on each system). On the system experiencing the issue... it's only my ISPs POP account that is getting duplicate emails... my gmail IMAP account has not yet experienced this issue.

A big difference between the Macbook Pro and the iMac is that the Macbook is running 32-bit mode while the iMac is running 64-bit.

Could there be a bug with Mail running in 64-bit mode that is causing the duplicate emails to download? Is anybody out there running Mail in 32-bit mode that is experiencing this issue? To determine... go to Applications folder... CTRL click on Mail... select "Get Info"... and look to see if "Open in 32-bit mode" is checked. If the option is not there... you are running in 32-bit mode.

I have a similar issue with printing preferences when running Safari in 64-bit mode... I can't select certain print options. If I run Safari in 32-bit mode... then I can select the print options.

I just don't get it... Apple advertises a 64-bit Snow Leopard... but the system still only boots a 32-bit kernel... yet wants to run the 64-bit applications?

For now... I'm going to switch Mail over to 32-bit mode to see if that makes any difference.

has anybody else had their iCal reminders forget what had already been reminded and had to re-cancel a whole big bunch of reminders going back for months/years? this also started happening since the upgrade....

also, FWIW, i was running mail at 64 bits...i've switched it to 32 to see if that prevents the multiple mail re-downloads which seem to have been getting worse lately

RE: ical reminders

Maybe I'm seeing the same thing. Some repeating event will pop-up a reminder, I'll "snooze" it for a while, and when it comes back I'll have two reminders. I pause those and next time I might have three. However, I'm using "missing sync" for Windows, and I often get duplicated events thanks to it, so I've been thinking that it's likely that it's the the cause of the problem. Although now that you mention it, this particular issue does seem to coincide with SL.

Why didn't I just still with 10.5?...

Jumping in the discussion here. I've been having this problem ever since I upgraded to snow leopard. I have a MobileMe account, as well as 5 POP accounts. I'm a server admin, and run my own mail server (which runs 4 of those POP accounts). I'm having the issue with all 4 of my hosted email accounts and the one POP account that I'm running off a different server.

I've tried the fixes listed in this incredibly long thread, always with temporary results. I have even tried setting mail to delete messages on the server immediately after downloading them, and that was utterly useless.

What it LOOKS like on the server end is that Mail is not sending a sort of "message retrieved" signal to the mail server when it downloads a message, OR Mail is not recognizing previously downloaded messages when the date changes (i.e. at midnight Mail sees the messages downloaded the previous day tagged as "yesterday" which Mail thinks is different from what it downloaded before because when it downloaded it, it was tagged "today") (Did that make sense?) Either way, the POP server is never able to tag the message as "retrieved" and hence resends the message... This does seem inconsistent, some messages get tagged, some do not... either way the issue seems to be with the Mail program, not with the POP server.

Essentially, it's a bug in the Mail code that needs to be hammered out.

Anyhow... there's nothing I can do on the server end. It seems that a CLEAN install of mail will help the problem (that's what I'm playing with right now). I would advise backing up all your old emails, and deleting both the mail preferences and the entire CONTENTS of the ~user/Library/Mail folder.

You will need to completely reconfigure Mail after this. This SEEMS to be working for me now. All my POP accounts are behaving nicely. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed this is the case, as I really don't have time to troubleshoot this, and getting about 50 of the same messages a day can really grate on my nerves. 🙂

I posted on this at the beginning of the thread a looong time ago. I cannot believe that Apple has not fixed this, or at least made some kind of statement.

Today my Mail program (in one hour while I was away from my Macbook Pro) downloaded 15,000 messages - 7 duplicate copies of every message I've received for the last month.

This is impeding my productivity.

I have tried everything suggested here, a long time ago. As the poster above says, this is clearly a bug that Apple needs to hammer out.

E-mail is a basic computer function that needs to work properly for people to A) be productive and B) not want to smash expensive Apple-branded external monitors.

Can anybody confirm that they're having this issue when running Mail in 32-bit mode?

It is a POP account on Earthlink, and I have a PC that I very rarely fire up and download e-mails.

I don't intend to do anything with my program since it looks like these fixes don't work. I'll wait for Apple to fix it. Meanwhile, what I'm doing is I delete every message immediately after I read it, and then keep it my trash folder for a while. That way when I have one of these "burps" when the mail downloads 525 e-mails like it did this morning, I can easily delete them all in one fell swoop (unread). This allows me to easily pick out the read messages I may need to refer to in my trash file.

Echo... Echo....

Oddlystrange and I are like twins!

I have 4 pop accounts and a MobileMe account in Mail.app, and I installed Snow Leopard two weeks ago. This morning I noticed that most (but not all) of my emails for the last 4 months are duplicated (or more). While today's and some of yesterday's late evening messages are fine. Every message from yesterday afternoon back to July of this year is at least duplicated.

The interesting thing is the progression, Emails from October are duplicated, while Emails starting in the afternoon of the last day of September and going back are triplicated (3 copies), followed by Emails starting on September 5th and going back which are quadruplicated (4 copies). Finally things go back to normal on July 21st. That date is the same as the date of the oldest emails still being held by my POP3 server (merak mail server, of which I am the admin). I keep them in waiting because I have several mac's and an iPhone which all check the same mail accounts.

So, Mail is connecting to my server, and re-downloading old emails ... seemingly once a month (more or less)....which would suggest that this problem preceded my upgrade to Snow Leopard, except that I never noticed it until after I upgraded to Snow Leopard so I'm still suspicious.

Hello Apple??? Is there anybody out there... perhaps because this discussion is marked as resolved nobody over there is seeing this. Shall we start a new thread?

Sent to Apple Feedback

In one of the Discussion groups a person said that after getting multiple copies of email, the temporary (I hope) workaround is to Quit & Restart Mail and rebuild all inboxes with the multiples (choose an inbox and then "Mailbox->Rebuild") and the multiples disappear. Could someone please verify whether or not this works?

For whatever reason I haven't gotten any multiples for the last 1.5 weeks to check that.

I am also concerned this Discussion is marked "answered". How does that happen? How can we fix it?

rebuilding mailboxes doesn't let this bug disappear.

I'm hit by hundreds of duplicates literally randomly.
In latest 3 days at least two/three times a day. Other days one or none. It's random.

I haven't received any duplicates since running Mail in 32-bit mode (still too early to say it's a valid workaround... but so far... so good... after 48+ hours).

How do you get it to run in 32 bit mode.

I am going to try it as I am desperate to try something new.

I am sick of the random sieges of thousands of duplicate message downloads...................!!!!!!!!!!!