inbox filling up with repeated messages

Modiver,

Your problem is clearly not the same. Discussing apparently similar, but entirely different issues in the same thread usually ends up being very confusing and actually goes against the Terms of Use of these forums:

Threadjack—To wrongly post a dissimilar issue in an existing discussion, distracting from the true focus of the discussion. If your issue has any significant difference from a similar topic, then you're probably better off posting a new topic to focus attention on your particular issue.

If your posts here can be useful for the OP’s problem, that’s fine, but if you want to discuss your own problem please start a new topic to properly discuss it in its own thread.

I was going to post about a similar (but not the same) problem.

I'll have 2 or 3 copies of the same email come in....same # and same time. If I delete one of the extras all of them end up in the Trash. So I have to go back to Trash and drag one of them back to the Inbox.

Anyone know what could have Mail doing this all of a sudden? It's been about 10 days this has been happening and I thought that it would go away on its' own.....like it appeared.

Version - Mail 2.1

As for your problems with spam: who's your ISP? I use Earthlink (more than 3 years now) and their SpamBlocker works GREAT! I wouldn't use anyone else now......and I've used all of the big names out there but not a one of them can compare with Earthlink. Just my 2¢.

BTW, I do NOT work for Earthlink. I'm just a very happy satisfied customer of theirs.

iMac PowerPC G4 700MHz Mac OS X (10.4.8) iPod Nano 4GB/white + iPod Video 60 GB/white / iBook

I have 2 POP accounts.....one being the Earthlink account (my main email address). The messages get deleted from the Earthlink server after being retrieved and the other is my gmail account that has not been a problem.

iMac PowerPC G4 700MHz Mac OS X (10.4.8) iPod Nano 4GB/white + iPod Video 60 GB/white / iBook

OK. Either Mail is losing track of which messages have already been downloaded, or it’s failing to remove them from the server according to your settings. How old are the messages that Mail keeps downloading repeatedly?

How can that be?

It can’t. 🙂

Try to remove from the server all the messages that have already been downloaded by clicking the Remove now button in Preferences > Accounts > Advanced -- check for new mail first, just in case there is something amiss and that function doesn’t work as expected.

If Remove now fails to remove the messages from the server, you may try to do so manually using the Account Info window. In order to use that feature, choose Get Info (⌘I) from the Action menu (gear icon) located below the mailboxes list in the main Mail window.

Use webmail if this account allows it to check whether Mail does actually delete the messages from the server when instructed to do so.

It seems as long as i completely remove the message
from the server, it doesn't come back. The other
accounts on my mac are experiencing the same problem.
We never had to remove messages from the server to
keep this "echo" problem from happening. Is this a
virus and if I get an anti-virus program will it
clear this up?

Thanks for being so patient with me.

Once I had a very similar problem (repeating messages, but also undeletable messages and messages that could not be seen). It started to occur after I totally reorganized my mailboxes and had moved lots of mail around in large numbers. What solved the problem was that I reinstalled a new copy of Mail. Apparently somehow the program itself got corrupted. Maybe you should try it.

You’re welcome.

This is not a virus, nor do I think reinstalling Mail would solve it. As I said in my previous post, the problem is just that Mail is losing track of which messages have already been downloaded and/or it’s failing to remove them from the server according to your settings.

It could be that Mail has trouble communicating with the server for some reason, or it could be that there is something amiss at the server. Some months ago, for example, Yahoo made some changes to their POP servers that caused many users to experience similar problems, and this forum became flooded with posts about it. Nothing the users could do at their end would fix it. Eventually, Yahoo acknowledged the problem (sort of) and fixed it at the server.

The only workaround I know of is to manually remove from the server the messages that Mail fails to remove automatically according to your settings.

The other accounts on my mac are experiencing the same problem.

Are you talking about other mail accounts or about other user accounts here? Is the provider the same for all of them?

Am experiencing the same problems-multiple copies of emails in my inbox of Mail. Frontiernet is also my provider. This started a couple of days ago. I have checked all my settings suggested in the Mail troubleshooting guide to no avail.

another Frontiernet user here. Friday I started having the same problem with my main account. Unfortunately the mail admin doesn't work on the weekends so i'm waiting. I'm betting on some server setting got munged.

And who is the provider of these accounts? I’m seeing another burst of such problems recently, and I’m wondering whether they could all be related...

What type of account is this (POP, IMAP, .Mac)? If POP, what are your Preferences > Accounts > Advanced > Remove copy from server settings?