Multiple Copies of Emails

It would be helpful if those experiencing the problem with POP accounts list their ISP or Mail Host that they are having the problem with.

Peter

Robert,

I know you are on Earthlink from another topic you posted. Have you tried to force the refreshing of the MessageUidsAlreadyDownload3 files as outlined earlier in this topic? In you case one time might be all it takes to correct this.

Also, if anyone used Mail prior to Mail 3.0, and migrated or simply updated, then I will encourage you to look in each POP account folder for the existence of an older file, named MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded2 (or even an earlier version) and delete it. Path would be Home/Library/Mail/each POP account folder.

Ernie

I'm having the same problem. My ISP is Rogers Cable in Canada. 3 POP accounts.

I've just changed the settings for all mail accounts to delete the mail from the server immediatley, rather than leaving it on there for a week.

Until the problem is fixed this is better for me than all the duplicate email.

I am also having the duplicate email problem. This is happening on accounts that I sync with my MacBookPro and my iPhone via POP3. There is not an ISP involved here... the mail accounts are on one of my own Linux servers. I've not changed anything on the MBP or the iPhone for at least a year and it was syncing fine prior to installing Snow Leopard.

I am having duplicate email problems, but slightly different I think. I am not receiving duplicates of new messages, but my imported messages in the mbox's I moved from my previous MBP to my new one (now running Snow Leopard) are there in duplicate, or more. Some messages appear duplicated six times. Is there a way to automatically deleted duplicated messages, or does this have to be done manually?

Arrgh this is driving me nuts. Same thing, I've got an account being accessed by my laptop, plus an iMac and my iPhone. My laptop keeps re-downloading the latest emails, I've got 150 copies of some of them.
The problem appeared with Snow Leopard, and the only account affected is my .Mac/MobileMe pop account. Really stuck here, I daren't fire up my email for fear of getting yet another copy.

Does anybody have any solutions?

Ditto here. Also driving me nuts.

Happens with my home ISP (Optusnet, Australia) and with my mail provider - mail.com . But not with Gmail.

I only access my mail from one computer, and I've always had every account set to delete from server immediately.

Ernie's original solution of forcing Mail to rebuild it's UID record worked for one whole day. But today (after an overnight shutdown and restart), it's back again.

I find I can stem the tide temporarily by going into webmail and manually deleting the messages I've already downloaded (which are on the server despite the fact that my Mail settings are for delete immediately).

Desperate for clues as are we all. Presumably a bug in SL / Mail v4?

Lance,

For test purposes, set Mail to not check for new email for some significant time, if you can, say several hours. At the beginning Control-click on the Inbox of this account and choose Get Account Info -- observe the messages on the server for whether they have a blue dot indicating they have not yet been downloaded. Throughout the test period make this same observation a few times. Try to determine if any message not of recent time stamp gets re-marked as not downloaded?

I don't expect that this will happen, but must be sure.

Ernie

Message was edited by: Ernie Stamper

Hello,

Just to add my info, I've been having the same problem since upgrading to Snow Leopard last Saturday. Mail provider is BTInternet here in the UK. Four POP 3 accounts all using this provider. No issues before the upgrade.

I have deleted the file MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3 as suggested and am now monitoring to see if the problem comes back (it's just finished its last and hopefully final download of duplicates). My wife's iPhone is the only other client than my iMac to access the email and she's at work so won't feel safe this is fixed until tonight!

Cheers,
Steve

Thanks for the help, Ernie. I ran this test for most of the day, and was about to report that no such thing had occurred .... But now just as I'm about to shut down and go to bed, I've had one instance of it. A spam message as it happens. Came through my main ISP e-amil account -- duly filtered and reported as spam through Mail and my antispam app -- then checked "Get account info" -- and behold there it is with a blue dot beside it.

Will see what happens tomorrow; but I'm expecting several more duplicates - both spam and genuine. (I'll report back anyway .. stay tuned)

Lance,

Keep in mind that the Get Account Info will allow you to remove messages from the server, whether downloaded or not (if Get Mail has not yet taken place).

Ernie

Thanks Ernie. Yes I have now learnt that - thanks to you 🙂

Anyway .. this morning the duplicated spam message I mentioned in my previous post was downloaded to my mac. And when I again checked the server through "Get account info", sure enough there it was yet again with a blue dot beside. (I've now deleted it.)

But OTOH my mail.com account behaved normally this morning, with three new messages which (so far, at least) have not rematerialised on the server. But it was not so yesterday.

Well, just checked again. No more spams through my ISP. But this time there's one new message through my mail.com account. And I found two copies of it in my inbox and - yes - another copy still on the server with a blue dot. Deleted it.

So behaviour seems to be consistent errors through one account, intermittent errors through another, and no problems with the other two, one of which is gmail.

Same Problem even after the upgrade to 10.6.1. POP3 running against my own mail server (Postifix, Dovecot). Never a problem before SL. Two machines connecting to the same POP3 account. Tried all of the suggestions mentioned so far. I guess Snow Leopard really is an endangered species.