Multiple emails

[#1]

When sending email with attachment, whether photo or video, multiple identical emails appear in my Sent box and then in the Trash.  When deleted, they reappear!

Since November, Plusnet are unable to solve this problem.

[#2]

Which email program are you using?

If you look at your mailbox using Webmail, do you see duplicates there too?

I would suspect that the presence of a large attachment is causing a failure (time out) on processing the mail item.  The job gets part done and has to be restarted resulting in multiple (part?) email message.

Using email to share photos is highly in efficient and should be avoided.  Upload the photo to a cloud service (One Drive, Dropbox, iCloud, Google Pictures etc.) and share the LINK to the picture via email.  Everyone will thank you for not cluttering up their mailboxes.  You can very quickly burn up your 1GB email storage allowance by shunting photos around by email.

[#3]

Thank you for your reply.  Is there anything one can do to extend the time allowed in sending an email?  I'm not very technical so your alternative suggestions are a bit beyond me!

[#4]

Which email program are you using?

[#5]

Outlook but the same thing happens directly in Plusnet as well.

[#6]

Sounds like a problem with a large mail item...

Slow webmail

There is a known gremlin in the third party Round Cube webmail program which can cause delays in listing emails - see the end user mitigation post at the top of the Email board here. It somewhat appears that any sorting or filtering on a large mailbox cripples the performance of RC webmail, where as the 'basic' webmail program (Squirrel Mail) is not affected. Using Squirrel Mail can be an effective way of accessing a mail box which is running slow with RC.

[#7]

Thanks for that.

Does this though solve the problem of deleted emails in the Trash, then reappearing?

[#8]

Depends why they reappear. I’ve seen email clients do the delete (locally) bit for some reason the delete instruction
Does not ‘reach’ the server ... which still has the email so it does not delete.

[#9]

This is a problem when a video is attached to an email.  I delete it in the Trash and I can then end up having 40 identical emails reappear in Trash.

I' ve had this problem since November and no one has managed to solve it!  It happens whether I'm in Outlook in my PlusNet folder,or directly in Webmail.

[#10]

Sounds exactly as I thought. Problems moving large emails for deletion. Next time it would be interesting to see if the basic webmail interface behaves differently.

@JW - any thoughts please?

[#11]

More than likely, it's the underlying protocols failing to handle the large size of the email with the attachment. Email was never designed with the transfer of large files in mind, and whilst it can, in theory, cope with large messages it often doesn't. When whichever portion of the process fails fails, it doesn't do so gracefully, as there's no 'resume' function built into the protocols. Which is why you often end up with duplicated messages. Then, because of the way that IMAP works, it has to synchronise the folders which can exacerbate the situation further.

Best advice is not to send large files via email. If it's too late for that, and you're wanting to clean things up, putting outlook into offline mode and deleting them from the client will resolve half of it. At the same time, logging into webmail and deleting them there would remove them from the server. This will prevent one or the other from putting the messages back on next sync.

[#12]

Thank you for that.  Yes after three months, I found that by going offline I could delete the pesky emails.

Silly question, does it have anything to do with the kind of computer one uses?  For instance my husband has an identical account as I have with Plusnet.  He uses a desk top computer, and does not have this problem at all.  I recently emailed from his computer to mine an email with a seven page attachment - no problem.  When I then emailed the same document from my laptop, it couldn't be sent and I had to break it down into two separate emails!

Also, my friends who use an ipad do not to have this problem?!

[#13]

It shouldn't matter too much what type of computer is being used. Though, as with anything, wireless is going to be more susceptible to small drop outs that won't cause issues with browsing but can interrupt ongoing connections. This won't always be evident, even if you're streaming something, as most newer traffic types will buffer content to account for issues of this nature.

From personal observation, I've seen this behaviour far more often with Apple Mail than any other email client.

[#14]

Interesting point.

Thank you for your help.

[#15]

"He uses a desk top computer, and does not have this problem at all.  I recently emailed from his computer to mine an email with a seven page attachment - no problem.  When I then emailed the same document from my laptop, it couldn't be sent and I had to break it down into two separate emails!"

Question: Do the desk top computer and Laptop both...

1. Connect to the route the same - WiFi or Ethernet?
2. Use the same email program?

Some email programs impose their own limits on attachment sizes.

If the both use the same email program, but are connected differently to the router - if the laptop is WiFi connected, this might suggest a WiFi performance issue.