Multiple Copies of Emails

found something interesting in MacPilot 3.3.5:

http://skitch.com/masterkain/nf4h9/general

maybe only a workaround..

I was having the same problem and I was able to fix it. I noticed that it only happens with pop mail accounts. I went into library/preferences and library/mail and deleted the mail preferences file, and then deleted all mail file folders that related to or had anything to do with my roadrunner and yahoo pop mail accounts. I also deleted the apple.com.mail.plist and the messagedownloadp3 file found in library/Mail. I made sure the mail app was not running and was full quit. I went in and deleted all of the files and folders as mentioned. Then I exited the finder and re-launched the mail app. I put in my gmail imap acccount and verified it worked correctly. Next I added my Yahoo account and made sure the settings call for it to remove the messages off of the server, and then checked to make sure it wasn't duplicating the messages. It wasn't, so I shutdown down the system and rebooted and tried it again and it worked fine. Then I setup my Roadrunner pop mail with the same settings as the yahoo pop mail and did the exact same process again. After running several tests, I then choose to try the yahoo pop account and changed the setting so it would leave a copy on the server. This time it worked like a charm. I then reboot and tried again and it has continued working perfectly ever since.

I seriously think that somewhere in snow leopard mail setup the pop mail accounts folders and files one of them or several of them became corrupted because of the way the mail assistant and setup works, compared to the previous mac mail version. Its been a full 24 hours and my mac mail no longer has any problems now. If you have any questions email me at socrates7431 (at) gmail (dot) com. <Edited by Host> I am more than happy to help.

Hope this helps.

I know that all of the people posting purported fixes to this problem mean well, but I really wish folks would read through at least a handful of previous postings. Calling the problem solved because it doesn't recur for a day is completely meaningless. This is a seemingly random problem that will sometimes occur several times a day, but other times will go for days or weeks without occurring.

I've had as much as two weeks pass without the problem manifesting itself. I've also had it occur twice in one hour. I've tried several of the solutions proposed here; none has solved the problem permanently (and it's hard to know whether any of the purported solutions have had any effect at all, given the seeming randomness of the frequency that the duplicated emails occur.)

So please, don't call the problem solved unless you have seen the problem go away for a month or more. Anything less than that, I'm not going to believe.

I will add in my $0.02 here. As far as POP3 related issues, they pre-date Snow Leopard and recur on a VERY long time scale as other posters have said. This has happened to my ISP POP3 account, which is really just a branded Yahoo account (AT&T branded). I have dealt with this somewhere between 1/2 to a dozen times over a period of about a year. And most recently about a month ago, prior to my Snow Leopard upgrade.

I've given up trying to correct it and just delete the duplicates each time.

It would appear most likely that something between Mail and the POP server gets confused about the message UIDs. My guess has always been Yahoo, to be honest. The next time it happens, I will pay more attention to the IDs of the messages.

I cannot speak to issues with Exchange accounts as I use Entourage for that.

Spencer

Entourage, POP3, multiple messages in batches of four, happened to me recently BUT....... not on any of my intel Macs, not in Snow Leopard, but in plain Leopard on an old Dual 2.7 PPC so think the Snow thing is not the only thing you can point a finger at.

Not JUST SLeopard

10.5.8 as well

Certainly interesting to hear that the issue has wider contexts. But I suspect that for the great majority of contributors to this thread it's new and unique to SL. That's definitely so for me ... I've never had this before through multiple iterations of MacOS, Mail & even Eudora.

+1

I first noticed this issue with SL on my home machine (multiple POP accounts, plus 2 Mobile Me accounts), then started seeing it on my work machine (two POP accounts, one IMAP account, same 2 Mobile Me accounts). Th issue seems to be tied to the POP accounts specifically.

Just adding a number to the issue. Looks like we're waiting on 10.6.2

cheers.

I don't know, considering that I've seen it since somewhere in the Leopard 10.5 line, I don't expect anything out of 10.6.2 for this.

But maybe I'll be proven wrong! 😉

Even if this problem was around before Snow Leopard, it only seems to have been getting much coverage since 10.6, so maybe that will have made Apple do something about it.

Without reading all the other posts, have you tried setting:

Mail>Preferences>Accounts>Advanced>Remove copy from server after retrieving message

to

Immediately

... or am I being too simplistic?

Nice try, Ivor 🙂 But alas, yes we crossed that one off the list a long time ago. And in my case at least, that's been my standard setting since forever - and I've got this issue like all the others ...

In Apple we trust, for good or ill ....

As long as you never say anything even remotely negative about Apple, you can post to this forum all you like. Kool-aid abstainers need not apply.

If as several reports suggest the problem is between Snow Leopard and Time Machine, then my great hope is that the 10.6.2 update will fix this issue. I know of numerous situations where both the freshening of the MessageUidsAlreadyDownload3 file combined with suspending use of TIme Machine has fixed the problem with the duplicate downloads.

The forced freshening of the MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3 file can be a solution to this problem pre-SL, but it is apparently Time Machine that allows the problem to swiftly return for Show Leopard users.

Ernie

Ernie,
From my point of view I have absolutely identified the culprit here.

I made a single change, over 35 days ago, and from that moment I have not had a single recurrence of the problem. Prior to that I had this problem occur several times a day, sometimes with up to 4 multiples per email and thousands of emails at a time.

During the same time period I have had this problem once on my iPhone - using the Apple iPhone Mail client.

The single thing that I changed in my system was to never launch Mail.app again. I very reluctantly changed over to Postbox and whilst the interface is clumsy at times it has provided great service and never had this multiples problem.

I'm sure that this is a complex problem with multiple factors at play. What I can say, however, is that the Mail.app is the thing that is necessary, though perhaps not sufficient, in order for this problem to occur.

BTW I have no relationship whatsoever with the guys who develop/market Postbox.

Regards
P1