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String Bass Author

Level 1

0 points

Multiple Copies of Emails

I installed Snow Leopard yesterday. When I came down this morning I discovered that all of my rogers.com email boxes had 4 copies of each email in each in box. The me.com mailbox did not have this issue. I put them all off-line when it appeared that copy number 5 was starting to download. The box to delete files on the server had ben reinstated for one of the rogers accounts, which had not been set in Leopard. I have used this computer since late May using Leopard without this problem. Any suggestions? I haven't yet called Apple or Rogers.

iMac 24 inch May 2009, Mac OS X (10.6), Toronro

Posted on Aug 29, 2009 10:38 AM

Top-ranking reply

russcus

Level 1

0 points

Posted on Aug 29, 2009 10:54 AM

I am experiencing a similar issue. Two copies of each message addressed to my company Exchange account. After I open and read one copy, the extra one disappears when I attempt to open it. I have not yet found a work around. I am reluctant to trash my mail prefs file because that action requires that I reenter all my account information for six accounts. Deleting the mail caches and rebuilding them did not remedy the problem.

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397 replies

Oct 22, 2009 7:53 PM in response to Lance Lawton

the odd thing is that in the latest two developer's seeds I didn't saw they are working on Mail.
I hope I'm wrong about it.

Oct 22, 2009 11:59 PM in response to String Bass

I called Apple support on this issue and opened a ticket. They suggested I delete my POP mail account and create it anew. This didn't fix the problem, as it occurred again repeatedly in the intervening day.

I finally just caved and changed my POP mail account to IMAP. I realize that this is not an ideal strategy or even a possibility for some of you, but for me the problem is solved.

Perhaps there is hope, as according to the [reliable] rumor sites a release of Mac OS X 10.6.2 is imminent, and Mail is frequently an app that gets updated.

Oct 23, 2009 1:00 AM in response to String Bass

Apple is aware of this problem. I spoke to a specialist today that mentioned that the engineers are currently working on an official fix for this in a future update. Just letting you all know that's what I found out!

ddenowh

Level 1

0 points

Oct 23, 2009 8:30 AM in response to String Bass

Add me to the list of people affected by duplicate emails! One of the previous emails mentioned that they saw this behavior after setting up Time Machine. I looked through the system.log file for the last time that the my duplicate email error occurred and found that there was indeed a backup happening at the same time as the mail was having trouble accessing the file /Users/dave/Library/Mail/MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3! I have added this file to the "do not backup" list in Time Machine and will see if that helps.

pjbvst

Level 1

0 points

Oct 23, 2009 10:25 AM in response to String Bass

Well..I'm one more to be affected by this annoying issue. Please Apple solve this asap!

Oct 23, 2009 3:50 PM in response to Gregory Miller3

Gregory, et al,

See the comment at:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10454345#10454345

It appears TM is related, along with the MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3 file. This would help explain why I, and probably a lot of others would not have experienced this -- I never use Time Machine at all, since my backup needs and 4.5 TB of internal hard drives render TM impractical.

Also explains why my initial reaction was to advise people to remove the MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3 file, but also why it worked only temporarily.

Ernie

Message was edited by: Ernie Stamper

Oct 23, 2009 6:52 PM in response to String Bass

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings. But I excluded MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3 from my TM backup yesterday, and the duplicate e-mail problem is soldiering on unabated still.

Oct 23, 2009 7:36 PM in response to Rangeshooter

I got the chance to assist to a "live duplication event".
it's definitely time machine blocking the access to the related mail file, at least for POP3 accounts.

Oct 24, 2009 4:21 AM in response to Lance Lawton

Just to be clear, I am not saying that this is definitely the fix, but it has worked for me. The issue was happening all day, every day for weeks. Now it is gone and has been gone since I made the change. If the file is corrupt, it may happen to you until you delete the file. Once you do, it will automatically re-create and the problem may recur one final time since your Mac does not have an index of what has been downloaded.

Oct 24, 2009 5:31 PM in response to Ernie Stamper

I just pulled up the file "MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3". Crazy - the date last Modified was the day SL was released (which is the day I think I installed it), 8/28/09!!

Anyway, I am going trash this file as Ernie S suggested and see if it fixes the problem of Apple's Mail randomly redownloading old messages.

BTW, these mail providers were the ones effected (random downloading of old mail): Earthlink, Verizon, and Drak.net. My Yahoo account seemed to be unaffected.

Rob Grant

Level 1

140 points

Oct 26, 2009 8:14 AM in response to String Bass

Very bad news, people: this has just happened on a non-Snow Leopard computer: an iMac running Leopard. Hoping it was a one-off and unrelated, but fearing the worst. Anyone else had this occur?

SKEL_73

Level 2

235 points

Oct 26, 2009 8:17 AM in response to Rob Grant

This is the first I've heard of it happening on a non Snow Leopard machine.....

So weird that Apple is still saying nothing.

Oct 26, 2009 3:15 PM in response to String Bass

Just happened on my MacBook (running SL). It downloaded duplicate messages for some (not all) from both a Yahoo email account and a personal email account through my domain name.

I have been running Snow Leopard for about a week and Time Machine has been set to back up for 3 or 4 days (we just bought our Time Capsule).

Oct 26, 2009 5:59 PM in response to mcmusic73

It's been two days and I haven't had any multiple copies of emails show up. So far so good. Trashing the "MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3" file may be a fix.

=========
"I just pulled up the file "MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3". Crazy - the date last Modified was the day SL was released (which is the day I think I installed it), 8/28/09!!

Anyway, I am going trash this file as Ernie S suggested and see if it fixes the problem of Apple's Mail randomly redownloading old messages.

BTW, these mail providers were the ones effected (random downloading of old mail): Earthlink, Verizon, and Drak.net. My Yahoo account seemed to be unaffected."

Oct 26, 2009 6:32 PM in response to String Bass

Hate to be a wet blanket. But I wouldn't expect lasting joy from any of the strategies suggested so far. I've tried nearly all of them ... trash MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3 ... Mail in 32-bit mode ... exclude MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3 from TM backup ...

Result from each one singly and various combinations thereof was essentially the same: respite from duplicates for rest of the day / duplicates back the following morning.

Multiple Copies of Emails