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Sent items show twice on MAIL (IMAP)

Hi everyone!

I need your help! 🙂

As the title suggests, I am experiencing an issue with the Mail app on my MacBook Pro. A few days ago, Hotmail/Outlook announced they started supporting IMAP and I thought that it would be the great way to sync my mail across all my devices (MacBook Pro + iPhone) and proceeded to set up my account as an IMAP account on all of them. Everything went flawlessly... Until today. Indeed, I noticed that when sending e-mails from Mail (OS X), the sent items would show up twice in the sent folder. It is all the more annoying since it syncs across my devices and I get these duplicates on my iPhone and on the web interface as well. Strange thing though, this does not happen when sent from my iPhone (or from the web for that matter), indicating clearly that the issue lies within the Mail app for OS X.

So my question is: does anyone know how to fix this and still let me sync my sent items across all my devices? What are the appropriate settings that I have to use to properly achieve this?

Thank you very much for your help!

Kind regards,

MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Oct 4, 2013 3:02 PM

Reply
195 replies

Oct 27, 2013 7:01 AM in response to dacastan

That is exactly what I experienced lately, dacastan!

I have the feeling that the whole duplicate sent item problem stems from that little box in Mail's settings. But then again, why would I want to uncheck that box if the point of having an IMAP e-mail account is to have one's items stored on the server for other devices to retrieve them?

Oct 28, 2013 9:28 AM in response to Valedictorian

you can uncheck that box and still have all mail synced (even sent emails), but what I don't like is that the Sent folder is not treated as a sent items folder anymore by Mail if you do that. For me, one could uncheck that box, and should still have the option to use the Sent folder as a sent items folder without Mail keeping a copy of the sent email and there would be no duplicates. But as I said in my previous post, that seems not possible. Unless someone else know how?

Nov 16, 2013 2:14 PM in response to Valedictorian

Hi all.


I have the same issue with a little story. I was using Sparrow to handle my Outlook.com mail and noticed the same thing, sent items were shown double in the sent folder, first I thought it was a Sparrow problem so I changed to Mail, when I finished syncing the whole account I started sending e-mails to my different contacts and noticed the same problem, my emails were showing twice in the sent folder.


It is not a Mail settings problem, a Sparrow problem or any email app for that matter, it is something in the Outlook.com settings that creates a copy of the sent email, one with the receiver's name and one with my name. It is a Microsoft problem (one more to add to the long list.. ) and one we hope they'll fix soon. For now, lets keep it double.

Nov 18, 2013 5:19 AM in response to Octaviofb

That's exactly it! I've just recently noticed that issue with the duplicates having the recipient's name, respectively mine.

Although I'm quite relieved that this is not caused by a failed configuration on my part, it does not stop being anoying nonetheless.

As you said, I really hope that Microsoft will fix this soon—it makes using Mail paineful. (Or will they?)

Nov 18, 2013 1:22 PM in response to Trinity22

It doesn't happen on the iphone because ios devices connect via EAS/Exchange, which leaves it up to the device to save sent messages. When you connect via IMAP, Outlook/Hotmail saves a copy of the sent email on the server. This is left over from the days when they only had POP for desktop connections.

Either Microsoft has to give us the option to turn this off on the server side or Apple needs to give us the option to stop OSX Mail from saving sent messages onto the server.

Sent items show twice on MAIL (IMAP)

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