Why does Mail keep reloading old emails into my inbox as if they are new?

This is very odd, especially for a Gmail account. Are you accessing your Gmail account as POP or IMAP?

Ernie

Please clarify reference to Gmail -- is this University POP account being collected into your Gmail account and this is where you see the duplicates? Or is the POP account set up in Mail, and this is where you are seeing the duplicates?

Also, please confirm the version of OSX you are using.

Ernie

Ernie, I'm having this problem on my wife's Mail via Comcast as well.
POP account, running 10.6.1 SL.

Several times a week (sometimes several times a day) deleted emails will repopulate into the inbox. Notification will say that she has 350+ "new" emails.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Same problem here, only not nearly the number of messages.

There are relatively few messages in my various mailboxes, and I've read them all. Yet every so often Mail decides that there are a few messages that it feels I haven't read, and puts the little numbered icon next to the mailbox in the sidebar. But when I click on the mailbox in question, the numbered icon disappears... until next time.

Hi again.

Thanks for clarifying -- suggesting it had anything to do with Gmail was not a good example, as there is nothing typical about use of Gmail.

Open the Inbox again, click on Mailbox in the menubar and choose Rebuild. You might want to use the Finder to make a Duplicate of the entire Mail folder found at Home/Library/Mail, and drag the resulting copy to the Desktop for temporary backup.

A bad index could be causing what you report, but please confirm you are not using Snow Leopard? A different explanation would likely result if using Snow Leopard.

Also confirm that you always allow Mail to complete housekeeping tasks before closing the lid of your laptop.

Ernie

Travis,

You have posted in the Mail & AB forum for Leopard, and not Snow Leopard, and the system info posting below any of your responses reports 10.5.6 -- you should correct the latter.

For some using Snow Leopard and using Time Machine, this has been leading edge issue, and one that hopefully will be dealt with by the next update to SL. What seems to happen with Mail 4.x and use of Time Machine, is that the file that in normal use prevents duplicate downloads gets restored to an old version, and thus Mail does not know it has downloaded the messages previously. Purging the MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3 file will cure briefly (after enduring one more download of all messages on the server, but the problem will return because of Time Machine. Are you using Time Machine?

As for housekeeping, if you quit Mail, and then shut down your laptop (or maybe even if only putting it to sleep by closing the lid), then Mail housekeeping tasks, which include keeping the index up-to-date do not get finished, and then can be problems. Now that I know you are using Snow Leopard, I am less suspicious of that.

Ernie

The report of the version of OSX you are using is indeed fixed. That does not result in the move of the topic, but that is OK for now.

Ernie

I'm really glad I found this post. I've had this happen 3 times since installing Snow Leopard and attributed it to a bad index. I'd create a new Inbox (pop mail) and archive my old mail, but the issue persisted. I get around 7500 emails a month and have around 45,000 emails in my inbox. I've since turned my "keep on the server" down to 7 days from a month since cleaning up 7500 duplicates with Mail Script's duplicate removal script took days to clean things up. Yesterday I finally resorted to starting over with a fresh OS without restoring mail. I've since found out two other co-workers who have had the same issue and we all leave time machine running all day. This aligns with my issue since I never experienced the duplicates while pulling email at home. It always occurred after plugging in at the office.

I'm switching to SuperDuper as a backup solution until Apple is able to resolve this. I've lost 4 days to duplicate email cleanup and system rebuilding to this issue so far.