topic Re: Odd email behaviour? in Email

Odd email behaviour?

Routefinder — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 17:57:47 GMT

Hi all

I use the MS Outlook as my email client, using POP3 not IMAP and I have my email-boxes set to 'delete from server when deleted from Outlook'.

However, even though email I surmised should have been deleted, every once in a while (did it again about 20 minutes ago,when I 'send/receive' I get 1000's of duplicate emails of the ones I deleted

It is not isolated to one email address/mailbox (edit ~ just checked and one mailbox does not appear to have the issue) that I use but one particular box seems to get multiples of some emails???

I surmise this may something to do with PN transitioning the email service to Greenby................but every time this happens I am having to trawl through my emails and delete them again!

I would welcome & appreciate any insights as to what is actually happening when I can expect this odd behaviour to finally stop.

TIA

PS AFAIK I have not received any notice about my account being migrated to Greenby.

PPS of note, I also see duplicated emails where I have not deleted them !

Re: Odd email behaviour?

jab1 — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 18:07:47 GMT

@Routefinder Are on a Plusnet email address or one of the 'legacy' brands? My understanding is they are transferring email accounts in blocks, starting with hose legacy brands with the smallest number of users. You will be informed before you are moved.

The strange behaviour has nothing to do with the transition, my suspicion is that the email server has got your account in a muddle, but that is only my thoughts.

Hopefully someone else ( @Townman / @MisterW ? ) may have further thoughts.

Re: Odd email behaviour?

Routefinder — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 19:37:49 GMT

Hi @jab1

Thanks for the reply.

I have PN mailboxes and FWIW have been a customer since 2003......so I am almost legacy

As mentioned, I mostly see the oddity in one particular mailbox but do also see to a lesser degree in at least one other (I have not drilled down into all of them too much.

For example this evening the one where I see it most downloaded 2554 emails and it seems one heck of a lot were the aforementioned duplicates You can imagine how much of chore it is trawl and delete them yet again!

I look forward to any more insight as it comes

Re: Odd email behaviour?

Townman — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 20:51:43 GMT

@Routefinder

Which mail brand?

I very much doubt that this has anything to do with migration.

If you log into the mailbox using webmail, do you see duplicate emails? I very much suspect that this is an issue with your email client, not the Plusnet mail server.

When you say "MS Outlook" is that proper Outlook of the (free) excuse for Outlook?

There is the possibility that the client is prematurely timing out the server: on IMAP there is a server timeout setting, is there the same on your POP3 configuration options? If yes, set it to two minutes.

Re: Odd email behaviour?

Routefinder — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 23:41:41 GMT

Hi @Townman

Thanks for the reply

I have not checked the webmail for quite a while.

I have MS SBE 2007 which includes (proper Outlook ) and it has been robust and reliable for many years. FWIW the problem I think may have started around February 2025. And beforehand all was as expected i.e. just got on with its job and just worked OK 100% of the time.

I have looked in the Advanced Settings and found the 'server timeout' that you mention and it was set(default) to 1 minute.....I have now increased it to 2 minutes.~ fingers crossed it improves matters but time will tell.

This evenings event showed for some emails I had 6 duplicates and I surmise that
(a)I had missed some along the way i.e. I had not deleted that/them and it was just adding another one each time?

or (b) even if deleted it is somehow managing to duplicate the download

The latter might explain that sometimes instead of say 150 emails I nigh on >2000

Now with 'server timeout' set to 2mins on the particular email box I will have see what happens next?

Thanks once again for the insights.

Re: Odd email behaviour?

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 00:19:29 GMT

It appears that MS SBE 2007 has been retired.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/previous-versions/download-office-2007

"Microsoft 365 plans are available as a monthly or annual subscription."

Re: Odd email behaviour?

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 00:27:42 GMT

Clicking though on on the links is interesting.

I ended up with...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/end-of-support-office-2007

"Action needed: Microsoft has identified that you're using counterfeit software. Stay safer with genuine Office today."

Um. I de-installed MS365 some time ago.

"Your Office 2007 is vulnerable to security risks"

I never had that installed on this hardware.

Re: Odd email behaviour?

Routefinder — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 01:08:27 GMT

Hi @Anonymous

Yes, I know it was retired sometime back

It's last security updates were 4th May 2023 NB I installed it on this box in May 2023 when I built it and it activated AOK, and please rest assured it is "Genuine" as it came, at the time I got it before 2023, from a very trustworthy source in the industry.

I run regular scans for anything 'nasty' on the system and my Internet security is running in the background ~ FWIW in these days of threats.

As for MS 365....not interested as I abhor the subscription model for software

Unless I can get a viable MS product that is perpetual license I will look at the likes of IIRC called 'Office Libre' ?

Re: Odd email behaviour?

quelquod — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 09:33:56 GMT

I’d be pretty surprised if it was anything to do directly with your Outlook 2007. I’m still running the 2007 Enterprise suite (legal copy including Outlook though with IMAP) and it’s been troublefree all these years and no incentive to upgrade.

Re: Odd email behaviour?

Townman — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 19:30:54 GMT

Might this have a bearing…

Insecure Protocols:

Outlook 2007 uses outdated encryption protocols, like TLS 1.0 and SSLv3, which are no longer considered secure by email providers and have been disabled on their servers.

Re: Odd email behaviour?

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 00:20:22 GMT

@Townman

TLS 1.0 was deprecated how long ago?

My vague recollection is a timeframe measured by starting at a decade ago.

I'm not aware of what e-mail providers may implement.

Oh, well. Life used to be simpler.

Re: Odd email behaviour?

Protech — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 06:27:55 GMT

@Anonymous
Key Dates for TLS 1.0 Deprecation:

Organization / Vendor Deprecation Announcement Effective Date of Deprecation

IETF (RFC 8996) March 2021 March 2021
Apple (Safari) 2018 announcement March 2020
Google (Chrome) October 2018 January 2020 (Chrome 81)
Mozilla (Firefox) October 2018 March 2020 (Firefox 74)
Microsoft (Edge/IE) October 2018 Second half of 2020

IETF Official Deprecation:

RFC 8996, published in March 2021, formally deprecated TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1.

Title: "Deprecating TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1"

Re: Odd email behaviour?

Routefinder — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 22:18:14 GMT

Sorry for the delay in catching up with this discussion.....

I am still seeing the originally reported multiple emails

I am buying the more up to date Office Home & Business 2024, this being the last true suite before Office 365.

It has a projected life until 2029 before it goes EoL

That suite includes Outlook that will allow me to import the .pst file from Office 2007, so that I can maintain the important emails (records, receipts etc) form that older version.

NB I will have to uninstall Office 2007 before installing the 2024 version and setup the accounts then import the .pst file.

However, should anything go awry I still have the Office 2007 installer and SP3 installer too should the need arise.

Re: my .doc & docx files I have read that Word 2024 will open them but likely in 'compatibility mode' the same too for my Excel .xls files.

Lastly, if I still see the multiples appearing and after deleting them one more time they re-appear then I wonder where the issue lays??? Not, surely based on the various replies above, due to Outlook 2024 ?

I will update this thread is due course as appropriate

Re: Odd email behaviour?

Routefinder — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 20:08:18 GMT

@Townman @Protech @Anonymous @quelquod @jab1

By way of an update.....

I am now using Outlook 2024 (part of my Office Home & Business 2024) and though the duplicates seem to have a been a thing of the past just the this evening after not using my PC for about 3 days I have seen the duplicates reappear i.e. on the particular mailbox it downloaded 893 emails ~ a heads up for me that something was a miss

Looking quickly at the list many of the duplicates start from 3/11/2025 and further back into October. They include previously deleted emails which should have cleared from the email server.

So, still very odd and tad annoying.

Any further insights would be much appreciated

Re: Odd email behaviour?

Routefinder — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 21:42:40 GMT

PS to the above

AS previously mentioned the multiples of the duplications is from just one to up to 6 or more.

Re: Odd email behaviour?

Routefinder — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 14:55:24 GMT

Yet another day with multiple duplicates

@plusnettony

I wonder if there is a solution to this at all???

Re: Odd email behaviour?

Routefinder — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 11:52:06 GMT

Right!

Today again another round of duplicated emails which as far as I can tell are both very recent i.e. including today & not yet deleted and deleted ones from the past 10 days or so.

This was the greater part of 1024 emails received the one mailbox that has seen the previously reported duplications.

@plusnettony I wonder can you please throw any light on this annoying behaviour?

Re: Odd email behaviour?

Townman — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 22:53:42 GMT

This can be a characteristic of using a POP3 client. If the POP3 and the server gets the index out of sync, the POP3 will down load them again.

Unless an IMAP client (such as webmail) shows duplicate emails … there are no duplicate emails: the client has simply chosen to download them multiple times.

Re: Odd email behaviour?

Routefinder — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 23:50:10 GMT

Hi @Townman

Thanks for the insight.

Yes, I am using POP3

AS mentioned IIRC previously this started relatively recently whilst I was using Outlook 2007 and various replies advised that due the nature of the older programs security that might be a source of the issue. I happily updated to Outlook 2024 and the problem persists.

So, I suppose the mystery is what is it about Outlook 2024 and 2007 before it would start to have this problem in one particular mailbox?

I take your point about it for some reason downloading copies but also as mentioned even when I have deleted the emails locally and my Outlook settings are to once once deleted locally 'remove from the server' i.e. it should no longer exist on the server to download

Are there any Outlook settings that I should be examining?