Removing duplicate emails in Lion/iCloud

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NezihSavaskan Author

Level 3

780 points

Removing duplicate emails in Lion/iCloud

Hey all,

So, I made the transition from Gmail to iCloud (I always used the Mail app).

As part of this transition I have now ended up with duplicates of a whole bunch of my emails, which is super annoying.

Has anyone got any tips on how to remove these please?

Things I have already tried:

DupeZap & TidyUp (removed a few duplicated and loads of duplicate attachements)

Araxis Find Duplicate Files (removed a few duplicated and loads of duplicate attachements)

Adreas Aman mail scripts (didn't work)

Mail Steward (didn't help)

The scripts on here: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20100126104840894(didn't work)

Rebuilding mailboxes in Mail

So the first two helped a lttle bit - detected about 800 items each, but there are still tons of duplicates I can't seem to remove (unless I manuall go through them all, which would take a month!).

Like this:

Note: some of the messages with duplicate items reside on my iCloud , some of them are just in mail boxes "On My Mac".

Anyone got any tips to remove them all?

Thanks in advance!

MacBook Pro (2011 Quad 2.3 i7), Mac OS X (10.7.2), 8Gb Ram, 250GB SSD

Posted on Oct 19, 2011 8:49 AM

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Answer 1

NezihSavaskan Author

Level 3

780 points

Oct 19, 2011 9:37 AM in response to NezihSavaskan

P.S. I tried moving a bunch of emails which had duplicates from iCloud back into "On My Mac" and running Tidy up and Araxis again - this didn't seem to make a difference. The duplicates are still there after restarting and rebuilding Mail.

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Answer 2

NezihSavaskan Author

Level 3

780 points

Oct 22, 2011 10:46 AM in response to NezihSavaskan

Anyone??

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Answer 3

Oct 23, 2011 12:57 PM in response to NezihSavaskan

I am haveing the exact same problem. I have ran a few scripts with no luck. tried to organize my mail so I can just group and delete them with no luck. Any help would be appriciated.

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Answer 4

NezihSavaskan Author

Level 3

780 points

Oct 23, 2011 12:59 PM in response to Danglerleaf

Have you tried the methids I mentioned in my first post? Although they only partially worked for me, they may work completely for you!

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Answer 5

Oct 23, 2011 1:05 PM in response to NezihSavaskan

yes. they do not work

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Answer 6

NezihSavaskan Author

Level 3

780 points

Oct 23, 2011 1:14 PM in response to NezihSavaskan

WOOO!!! I just found a solution!

http://jollyroger.kicks-***.org/software/RemoveDuplicateMessages-Mail.zip

Instructions:

Open Mail
Select all the messages which have duplicates (I had to do this on a folder by folder basis.
Double click on the script (it will open in ApplScript)
Run the script
all the duplicates are removed and stored in a back-up folder it creates

Woohoo!

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Answer 7

Oct 23, 2011 1:22 PM in response to NezihSavaskan

how can I group all my messages that have duplicates? Also how long does it takes. Mine froze up.

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Answer 8

NezihSavaskan Author

Level 3

780 points

Oct 23, 2011 1:30 PM in response to Danglerleaf

Click in a mail box, in the second colum (the list of actual messages) shift or command and select multuple message (or command A to select all).

It's taking a while, I haven't tried it with a batch or more than about 300 at a time (which took about a minute).

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Answer 9

NezihSavaskan Author

Level 3

780 points

Oct 23, 2011 1:43 PM in response to NezihSavaskan

Urgh. Doesn't seem to work for messages stored on my iCloud... so currently copying them from iCloud to "On My Mac", removing them from iCloud, running the script, then putting them back on iCloud.

LONG!

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Answer 10

Oct 23, 2011 1:53 PM in response to NezihSavaskan

i thought it worked, but they just came back

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Answer 11

NezihSavaskan Author

Level 3

780 points

Oct 23, 2011 2:13 PM in response to Danglerleaf

Seems to work fine for me... rebuilt mailboxes, and closed and reopened Mail... they haven't come back.

Maybe your issue is unrelated? Duplicate accounts or something?

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Answer 12

nugieuy

Level 1

0 points

Mar 13, 2012 8:19 AM in response to NezihSavaskan

I have the same problem, but jollyroger's script link is broken.. Maybe you can share the script? Many thanks

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Answer 13

Jun 15, 2012 4:50 PM in response to NezihSavaskan

I had the same problem. Not only duplicates, but triplicates, quadracates, seemingly on a random basis, i.e., not all messages had multigangers. I didn't try any tricky scripts or apps. I didn't select any messages, of which I had 4,995. I clicked Rebuild Mailbox. Strange things seemed to happen. Everything (in the Mail window!) disappeared. After a little while, all my Notes appeared, all sorted together. Then they went away. Empty window. The Menu Bar working gear was still spinning though, so I had some reason to stay calm. After several minutes, maybe around 5, Messages began to appear, raining down from the Cloud in clusters and dropping into formation. That took a couple of minutes to finish, and what I saw was a nice Inbox with single copies of messages, and the count was down to 3,927. The date goes back to the beginning of Mac time, so I suppose, if not assume, that they are all there. This approach was OK for me, because I don't really care any more than Apple does whether I ever see my mail again. (If they did, they would help out in these forums. What, they can't afford it? To be fair, they did recover some mail for me a couple of years ago, but their act of mercy came with a warning and a guilt trip -- which, you'll admit is still a victory for me.)

Incidentally, this essentially is also the way I de-duped, for the most part, my iTunes library, i.e., I just let Match do it's work and then sorted it by Cloud status.

Good luck.

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Answer 14

Jul 1, 2012 6:11 PM in response to NezihSavaskan

You may want to try the method described in this blog post. It works for deleting more than 100,000 Safari duplicates when I tested it out using a mock bookmarks library.

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Answer 15

Dec 5, 2012 9:28 AM in response to NezihSavaskan

The above script doesnt seem to work for iCloud/IMAP mail on Lion

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