Simultaneous email duplication on Outlook and Nokia Mesaging Email
On 10th December, my Outlook and my Nokia phone both suddenly started downloading duplicate copies of my emails. I had made no changes to my phone settings or to Outlook. Gmail, which only looks every half hour, did not collect any duplicates. Nokia mail did not collect as many duplicates that Outlook did - Outlook downloaded all emails, read or not, going back 23 days - which created around 400 duplicates. The duplicates all showed as unread.
All three clients are set up to use POP3 and Oullook is set up to leave copies and delete anything over 30 days old. I have had the set up for many years, except for Gmail being added a few months ago to get around terrible Squirrelmail - and this has never happened before.
The support from PlusNet has been poor - making assumptions, almost no questions to clarify the problem, ignoring details provided and making suggestions that cannot be from real IT specialists.
So far, I have had:-
1. We don't support Outlook, delete and recreate the account – why would I do that, and what about the phone?
2. You have 3 different email addresses – perhaps people are sending to both addresses – unbelievable suggestion.
3. We will pass it to the ‘office’ to respond – but I see no evidence of escalation to a real IT expert.
4. If your account in Outlook has been modified then it often 'forgets' which email has already been downloaded and downloads them all again – Outlook has not been modified and what about the phone mail client doing the same at the same moment?
PlusNet seem unable to problem solve this situation so I don’t know the cause, if it will happen again, and I am left with having to delete 400 messages by hand or by buying some software.
Has anybody had the same problem, and do you know the cause? It seems to me that something happened on the server and PlusNet are trying to blame my client without clear reason. If the client did cause it, I’d like to hear a believable suggestion that isn’t just ill-informed guesswork.
Many thanks
Paul
All three clients are set up to use POP3 and Oullook is set up to leave copies and delete anything over 30 days old. I have had the set up for many years, except for Gmail being added a few months ago to get around terrible Squirrelmail - and this has never happened before.
The support from PlusNet has been poor - making assumptions, almost no questions to clarify the problem, ignoring details provided and making suggestions that cannot be from real IT specialists.
So far, I have had:-
1. We don't support Outlook, delete and recreate the account – why would I do that, and what about the phone?
2. You have 3 different email addresses – perhaps people are sending to both addresses – unbelievable suggestion.
3. We will pass it to the ‘office’ to respond – but I see no evidence of escalation to a real IT expert.
4. If your account in Outlook has been modified then it often 'forgets' which email has already been downloaded and downloads them all again – Outlook has not been modified and what about the phone mail client doing the same at the same moment?
PlusNet seem unable to problem solve this situation so I don’t know the cause, if it will happen again, and I am left with having to delete 400 messages by hand or by buying some software.
Has anybody had the same problem, and do you know the cause? It seems to me that something happened on the server and PlusNet are trying to blame my client without clear reason. If the client did cause it, I’d like to hear a believable suggestion that isn’t just ill-informed guesswork.
Many thanks
Paul
Understood, I'll have a look at the answers you got on your account and make sure there's feedback passed on to them. I'm sorry about that, and thanks for the understanding 
Quote from: paulBG All three clients are set up to use POP3 and Oullook is set up to leave copies and delete anything over 30 days old.
This I think is the clue. If there is a temporary problems sometimes the mail client forgets which emails it has already read and downloads them all again.
If you want to use the leave on server option of POP3 I'd suggest 30 days is far too long.
IMAP is designed for keeping multiple clients looking at the same mailbox in sync with each other, it even syncs the sent mail.
There's no reason why you can't mix POP3 and IMAP, so you could be using IMAP and have Google fetching mail using POP3.
Something to note: Google and your phone will only be looking in the primary inbox folder, so if you've moved a message to another folder before Google/your phone has done a fetch on it, it won't be seen by Google.
What do you currently do about mail you send using Google or your phone, BCC it to yourself?
Something to note: Google and your phone will only be looking in the primary inbox folder, so if you've moved a message to another folder before Google/your phone has done a fetch on it, it won't be seen by Google.
What do you currently do about mail you send using Google or your phone, BCC it to yourself?
If you use IMAP on your PC and create a folder under the mailbox called (say) 'Read mail', then as you read mail on your PC (or webmail if they ever get it usable) move it in to the read folder, when you collect mail using your phone it will not pick up mail you've already read on your PC. With the phone set to leave the mail on the server, next time you sync mail on the PC it will also pick up the mail you've read on the phone.
Google will be a bit hit and miss - it will depend on whether you moved the mail before or after it tried to collect it.
Now, although all your mail will be on both your PC and the Plusnet mail server (there will be an option in the mail client to store mail for off-line reading - you need that on), if there is another event which causes POP3 clients to forget which messages have already been downloaded it will only download those you have left in the inbox, not those you've moved to the read folder.
Google will be a bit hit and miss - it will depend on whether you moved the mail before or after it tried to collect it.
Now, although all your mail will be on both your PC and the Plusnet mail server (there will be an option in the mail client to store mail for off-line reading - you need that on), if there is another event which causes POP3 clients to forget which messages have already been downloaded it will only download those you have left in the inbox, not those you've moved to the read folder.