Mail duplicating messages

H

Harvey

Registered
Hey guys, I'm not sure if this is a problem with my Mail client, or something on the server, but for some reason recently Mail has been re-downloading all the messages on my mail server. Which means, I have like 3 copies of the same 400 or so messages in Mail.

First off, is this a problem anyone else has experienced?

Second of all, what can I do to fix this?

Today I just set the client to remove all messages from the server to see if it fixes things, but in reality, I would rather not do that. I like having my mail in multiple places if you know what I mean.


Anyway, let me knwo if anyone has any insight into this!

Thanks all.

-Harvey
 
Sounds like you have a POP server running. Why not switch to IMAP? IMAP allows you to update your offline mails but keep all mails on the server. You can see all your mails from different machines. However, if you tend to get large mails and your mail account is not that big, POP will be the only way to go...
You didn't say if the problem was fixed after you set your mail client to remove all messages from the server once it downloaded them..:confused:
 
I think it goes without saying Mail really shouldn't be doing this!

Although you said that you'd like to keep a back up of your mail on-line, your ISP might well have a mailbox size limit. So after a while, your old emails might start to disappear.

The best thing to do is just make a back up of you mail, which is as simple as going to: ~/Library/Mail copy the Mail folder anywhere you like, then going to ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist and putting that along with it.

It may be that by having the option to delete your mail once it's been retrieved is causing the problem, but you might want to give your ISP a call just to make sure that they're not having problems at their end.

Hope that helps?..
 
If you leave you mail app set to leave mail on the server, if you have a size limit on the server, when it gets full, anyone sending you an email will be bounced back, won't get through.

If you like have multiple copies of you mail, just do a daily backup of your mail box on your system.
 
can be set under the 'advanced' tab of account prefs to delete mail off of the sever immediatly upon download. there will be no more double copies. :p.


ooops you said you didnt want to do that. sorry :rolleyes:
 
no limit on server. remove messages from server didnt fix problem.
ill see if my isp supports imap
 
no limit on server. remove messages from server didnt fix problem.
ill see if my isp supports imap
 
Mail keeps track of each mail which was already downloaded. Maybe this mechanism has become confused. Exit the Mail program, then open your account's folder in Homedirectory -> Library -> Mail, there is a file named 'MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded' which is used for this purpose. Delete this file to give this mechanism a fresh start. Hope this helps :)
 
That file doesn't seem to exist...

Beasley-Harvey:~/Library/Mail harvey$ ls -al
total 1312
drwx------ 8 harvey harvey 272 5 Mar 22:56 .
drwx------ 31 harvey harvey 1054 31 Dec 13:43 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 harvey harvey 6434 9 Mar 21:31 DefaultCounts
-rw-r--r-- 1 harvey harvey 636936 8 Mar 09:18 LSMMap2
drwx------ 18 harvey harvey 612 9 Mar 21:31 Mailboxes
-rw-r--r-- 1 harvey harvey 8986 5 Mar 22:56 MessageSorting.plist
-rw-r--r-- 1 harvey harvey 8986 5 Mar 22:56 MessageSorting.plist.backup
drwx------ 8 harvey harvey 272 9 Mar 21:30 POP-jnewbie@mail98.pair.com
Beasley-Harvey:~/Library/Mail harvey$
 
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