Multiple Copies of Emails

Since I made the change to the Time Machine settings over a week ago this issue has been completely resolved. Prior to that, it had been happening consistently to me with hundreds of duplicates per day for weeks. Nothing else has changed, so at least for me, the fix worked. I think there are probably multiple potential reasons for it and I just happened to (luckily) identify the one that was impacting me.

Had a few days of breathing room and now am completely under siege - yet again - with thousands and thousands of duplicates constantly re-downloading. This is has been a huge distraction and is seriously effecting my ability to conduct business................

That's just dandy Gregory, but many of us do not have 'MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3' anywhere on our Macs. Its never been there (I went back to my original backup before upgrading to SL and looked) and nothing we have tried has subsequently produced it. Hard to exclude something that isn't even on the hard drive. Glad it worked for you, but this is clearly not the panacea for the rest of us. Also glad Apple knows about it and I can expect some relief soon.

In reviewing your posts, I cannot find that you ever said whether you are using POP or IMAP accounts? If you are using POP accounts, then you would have to have the MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3 file to work properly at all? If you are using POP, then look specifically at the location Home/Library/Mail?

If not using POP, then on your IMAP accounts, what is your setting in Mail Preferences/Accounts/Advance regarding keeping copies of messages and their attachments for Offline viewing, btw?

Ernie

In desperation (the thousands of emails in my in-boxes were really bothering me!) I tried Gregory's time machine fix. I found the "MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3" file in my library and directed time machine to exclude it from back up. No copied messages for nearly 24 hours! Thanks, Gregory. Fingers crossed it stays fixed!

I just today "migrated" my files from my (old) eMac with OS 10.6.1 to a new iMac27 with 10.6.1. The eMac did not/does not download multiple copies, but the new iMac one Does, and the Mail ver. and settings are identical. I thought it was Halloween, thanks for this forum, I am not alone.

DBeau: Are you sure you were running 10.6 on your old eMac? Snow Leopard only runs on intel Macs.

What is the solution to this? I tried deleting that file, but after a few days of it working, I just got a hundred old emails redelivered!? What the F!!!! I am surprised there is no news story about this problem, it is happening to thousands of people and they haven't issued a fix?
Bob

This is a problem, no doubt, but the issues as we know it are being addressed. One thing that has always impressed me about Apple is how quickly they do respond to fixing issues. I can't even begin to know how much of an undertaking developing software is.

This issue does not stop the computers from working, it is a MAJOR annoyance and time waster, no doubt, but the systems are still operational. It's been noted they are working on a fix. 10.6.2 has been seeded to the developers, it's only a matter of time until a fix is underway. Give it time.

I was having this problem and searching before I could find anyone posting about it. I did the steps everyone else did as well and couldn't get it to fix things. The very last thing I did was exclude the MessageUidsDownload3 file from Time Machine and my problem has never been reproduced again. Obviously this is not a fix for everyone. My IMAP accounts DO NOT do this only my POP3 accounts. Some people's IMAP accounts do. There are so many variables and apparently one fix for all is not the solution.

As for why it's not on the news, etc, etc. My guess is, it's not effecting as many people as it would seem. The only reason why it's such a big deal to us is, we are the ones being effected having to delete hundreds and sometimes thousands of emails.

Until Apple has a fix, I took steps to delete mail off of the server for the POP3 accounts after 1 week. I now separate my mail, etc., etc. Until there is a fix, I'm going to do whatever I can to make as little work for me if the problem recreates itself. All I can suggest is everyone keep talking about possible solutions and what works for each other. Getting angry at Apple WILL NOT SOLVE the problem. They know about it and have said they are addressing the issue, what more can be done? Nothing....

Hello,

I'm having a problem with mail.app that in my opinion has something to do with the problem described in this thread.

I have no problem with E-Mails. I'm using 3 pop3 accounts and all are configured to delete downloaded mail immediately from the server. So I don't have mail duplicates.

But I have a big problem with RSS-feeds. I have configured Mail as my standard RSS-reader. In Mac OS X 10.5.x RSS-News that were read and deleted were in trash and away. Since 10.6 all RSS-News are downloaded again and again. Every time I start Mail I have to delete about 150 RSS-News from my inbox.

It's not so dramatic like thousands of E-Mail, but annoying, too. When deleting the duplicates I must be very careful to not accidentally delete important mail that I sometimes keep in my inbox to answer to it later (what happened to me more than once).

The download of the already read RSS-News happens only when starting mail, so I try to open Mail as rarely as possible, but sometimes I close mail by mistake and every few days I have to boot. 😉

I tryed all the tipps above, deleted all the RSS-Feeds and added them again, deleted the MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3, excluded it from time machine, de-installed Missing Sync and so on, but nothing worked.

I'm bothered by this issue since about 3 weeks, since I upgraded to SL. After installing SL and everything seemed to work I immediately upgraded to 10.6.1 so I can not say if it happens since 10.6 or 10.6.1.

Now I'm hoping for 10.6.2 but I'm missing an official statement from apple about this problem. Everytime I read news about 10.6.2 sadly there's never mentioned any problem with mail that this update will fix.

Best regards

Thomas

Message was edited by: t.schaefer

I just wanted to chime in that I'm having this mail download problem too. I have multiple e-mail accounts, both POP and IMAP, multiple rules, and multiple e-mail providers (Time Warner Road Runner, Gmail, and a private server for my work) going into Mail.app.

Some days I get the same e-mails downloaded 3 and 4 times over and over again.

I can hardly stand it any more. It's seriously driving me crazy. I do a lot of e-mails each day, and weeding through what I've done and not done is really wasting a lot of my time.

I seriously hope Apple deals with this soon.

Well, I posted earlier stating no problems since deleting the "MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3" file. That was true until today. Got the infamous 100's of emails redownloaded.

An interesting correlation is that I had used my iTouch (for the first time in several weeks) to check e-Mail. Then this happens about 12 hours later.

I fixed my duplicate emails from pop email servers.

First I made sure mac mail was not running.
Second I went into my library/Mail and deleted these folders - any pop folder related to your email pop accounts.
Third I went into Library/Preferences and deleted the file named com.apple.mail.plist.
Fourth, I reopen mail and one by one setup each pop account and imap.
Making sure that mail deleted the messages off of the server, and then doubled check it after rebooting it several times, and when I didn't see any dups pop up. Then I adjusted one pop account to leave a copy on the server. Then I tested it a couple times and also rebooted the mac and did a couple of restarts to make sure the changes were complete and permanment to the system.

So far its working like a charm.

I have a feeling some where in all of those files and folders I remove, there were a few of them that were corrupted due to the upgrade to Snow Leopard.

Hope this helps.

I wouldn't be so hasty, I've had more than 3 weeks go by between mass duplicate downloads. When I've not had the problem for 3 months I'll begin to think it's solved.