Multiple Copies of Emails

Russcus,

An Exchange account, unless POP, would not impact or be impacted by the MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3 file.

Ernie

Hey Ernie,

I'm having the same problem. Twice now I have deleted these mass dupes (over 2700) that Mail re-downloaded from my POP Yahoo! account only to see them return. At this point I'm curious to see if they get downloaded again if I do not delete the dupes. From what others have said, it appears that they may in fact get downloaded again.

I checked my MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3 file and it's last update was after the most recent mass download. Assumingly then, it is being updated, but perhaps incorrectly. I may try doing as you suggest and deleting the file to allow it to be rebuilt.

Question though - my goal is to retain the copies of these messages that were already in my mail library. I want to retain the reply, forward, flagged, etc indicators that some of the messages have been tagged with from normal mail management. So, I don't really have use for the newly downloaded copies assuming it will only happen once more if this procedure does indeed fix the problem. If I delete the file, relaunch mail and get another mass download, should I be able to delete these new dupes without having that action set off another download (assuming the file recreation fixes the problem)? My thinking is that it should be ok as I would guess that the MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3 file doesn't force a re-download of messages just because you have permanently deleted them locally - under normal operation of course. Is this accurate?

Thanks.

Jeff

Message was edited by: Rgbyhkr

You have guessed correctly, in my experience. The only thing that could impact that, would be if you had the selection in Mail Preferences/Accounts/Advanced to remove from server when removed from the Inbox -- it seems you would not have that selection, so should not impact.

Ernie

Mail is officially out of control - I just watched it download 3240 messages, each the 7th duplicate, and then do it again for the 8th set, a minute later.....

Did you try forcing Mail to freshen the MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3 file?

Btw, I have not experienced this on any of my POP nor IMAP accounts.

Ernie

this suggestion seems to have worked for me for the time being...... thank you Ernie.

Thanks as well Ernie. I am trying the suggesting and the new download is proceeding. This will hopefully be the last one. Just for testing purposes, I will not delete the dupes for awhile - just to see if another download gets triggered. Later on tonight, if all is well, I will do the deletions and see if things stay fixed. I’ll report back.

Thanks!

Jeff

This ONLY happens with POP accounts where there are multiple mail clients checking the same POP account.

Ernie's suggestion is a good one, but the problem will manifest itself again when two (or more) mail clients collide while retrieving POP mail.

It does not happen with Exchange or IMAP accounts.

You can report the problem here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Peter

Peter,

How frequently do you have these different email clients checking for New Mail on these same POP accounts? This is probably a great observation, but I have not had a chance to see this, even though I had another computer checking my accounts during certain periods of testing with Mail 4.0.

Ernie

Does anyone know if there is a way to 'select all unread' to that I can easily get rid of these thousands of duplicates with out manually sorting?

Ernie,

One machine is set to 1 minute, the other is set to 5 minutes. If I shut down one client (say for 24 hours) there are no duplicates. If I have two clients running, it is virtually a guaranteed event.

It does not happen with my IMAP accounts.

Peter

Peter,

It would not happen with IMAP accounts, but IMAP accounts could impact how long the client needs to finish checking. With multiple accounts, I would never suggest anything shorter than 5 minutes.

I repeat: this is a great observation! I think you need to test with other intervals before a good bug report (if it is a bug) could be filed. Also, specific mail servers may be more prone to let this corruption happen.

Ernie

Ernie,

I have already tested with various intervals and the bug is reproducible. It only occurs with Snow Leopard Mail Clients (v4.0). Does not happen with Leopard.

I have already reported to Apple.

Peter

Peter,

Are you saying that both, conflicting clients must be Mail 4.0?

Still may differ depending upon providers.

Ernie

Message was edited by: Ernie Stamper

Ernie,

Sorry, I guess I was not clear.

The bug is reproducible in Snow Leopard Mail v4.0, if any other mail client is checking the same POP account. That includes Outlook, Leopard Mail, Eudora.

The duplicate emails occur only in the Snow Leopard Mail 4.0 client, not other clients that are running concurrently.

Peter