Downloading Duplicates

J

Jeff Vandehey

Hi gang, I'm having a problem in that Entourage is downloading duplicate
emails to a pop account. This very well might be a server thing, but here
are some of the details.

The user is running Entourage X SR1 on Mac OS 10.2.8. His account is POP,
leaving a copy on the server, but deleting after 90 days. Every so often
(maybe every other month), his account re-downloads a copy of all the
messages on the server, 90 days worth. He has a very high volume of messages
(approx 40/day), so we are talking about thousands of messages. I caught the
program doing this, and stopped the download process and rebuilt his
Entourage DB with a typical rebuild. Upon launch, it still wanted to
download the messages.

I know that this very well could be a server issue. I don't know all the
specifics, but I know it's a Novell NetMail server which has been very
flakey in the past. Re-indexing his account on the server does nothing.
Running his account as IMAP is not an option. The server is too flakey for
this, and has too many connection problems.

Does anyone have any ideas? I guess I can bump his account to delete from
the server after 30 days instead of 90. From the information above, would
you think that it is a server issue, or a client problem? It's the client
that keeps track of whether or not a message has been downloaded, right?

Many thanks.

-Jeff
 
A

Allen Watson

It is almost certainly a server issue. I've seen this happen when, for some
reason, the server database was restored from a backup. It would lose track
of what had been read.

One way to help work around the situation would be, after you have stopped
the download, go to the Account and edit it to "Allow online access" under
options. The account will appear near the end of the folder list. If you
click there, it will download all the message headers (which will still take
a while but nowhere near as long as downloading all the messages). You can
then sort by date, select all the outdated messages, and mark them as read.
Then, reconnect normally and you'll receive only the new messages.
 
K

Keith Esau

Hi gang, I'm having a problem in that Entourage is downloading duplicate
emails to a pop account. This very well might be a server thing, but here
are some of the details.

The user is running Entourage X SR1 on Mac OS 10.2.8. His account is POP,
leaving a copy on the server, but deleting after 90 days. Every so often
(maybe every other month), his account re-downloads a copy of all the
messages on the server, 90 days worth. He has a very high volume of messages
(approx 40/day), so we are talking about thousands of messages. I caught the
program doing this, and stopped the download process and rebuilt his
Entourage DB with a typical rebuild. Upon launch, it still wanted to
download the messages.

I know that this very well could be a server issue. I don't know all the
specifics, but I know it's a Novell NetMail server which has been very
flakey in the past. Re-indexing his account on the server does nothing.
Running his account as IMAP is not an option. The server is too flakey for
this, and has too many connection problems.

Does anyone have any ideas? I guess I can bump his account to delete from
the server after 30 days instead of 90. From the information above, would
you think that it is a server issue, or a client problem? It's the client
that keeps track of whether or not a message has been downloaded, right?

Many thanks.

-Jeff
Click to expand...

The server occasionally re-numbers the message IDs. Whenever it does this,
all the messages appear "new." Some servers do this when too many emails are
kept. Some do it when certain quotas are hit, or when specifically
instructed to.

Why in the world would anyone want to keep 90 (or even 30) days worth on the
server? Does he not keep them locally? Does he use more than one machine to
access them, and then only once a month? He might be much better off using
an archiving tool with Entourage instead of leaving them on the server that
long.

The only workaround I know of is to delete the mail from server more often.
Also, have Entourage delete emails on the server when they are deleted
locally reduce the number of stored emails.

Keith Esau
[email protected]
 
J

Jeff Vandehey

Thanks for the information Allen. I am not familiar with the "Allow Online
Access" function of a POP account. How does this work? Does it create an
IMAP connection? Are there any other benefits from turning this on?

Also, I checked with the mail admin people. They said that the mail server
had to be bounced and restarted at about the same time the duplicates came
on. I'm sure this created the problem.

The account is set to delete after 30 days. This allows enough messages to
stay on the server while the user travels, so he can fetch old emails via
web access or through his cell phone.


Thanks again for the help.

-Jeff
 
D

Diane Ross

Thanks for the information Allen. I am not familiar with the "Allow Online
Access" function of a POP account. How does this work? Does it create an
IMAP connection? Are there any other benefits from turning this on?
Click to expand...

Go to Tools/Accounts/that account/Edit/Options. Check "Allow online access".
That puts an icon of your account in the Folder List.

Click on the account
icon. You're now looking at the messages on the server. It's like a poor
man's IMAP.
Also, I checked with the mail admin people. They said that the mail server
had to be bounced and restarted at about the same time the duplicates came
on. I'm sure this created the problem.
Click to expand...

Sounds reasonable.
The account is set to delete after 30 days. This allows enough messages to
stay on the server while the user travels, so he can fetch old emails via
web access or through his cell phone.
Click to expand...
You can use the online status to delete the older mails that are causing the
duplicates.
 
A

Anthony

Keith Esau said:
The server occasionally re-numbers the message IDs. Whenever it does this,
all the messages appear "new." Some servers do this when too many emails are
kept. Some do it when certain quotas are hit, or when specifically
instructed to.

Why in the world would anyone want to keep 90 (or even 30) days worth on the
server? Does he not keep them locally? Does he use more than one machine to
access them, and then only once a month? He might be much better off using
an archiving tool with Entourage instead of leaving them on the server that
long.

The only workaround I know of is to delete the mail from server more often.
Also, have Entourage delete emails on the server when they are deleted
locally reduce the number of stored emails.

Keith Esau
[email protected]
Click to expand...
Keith Esau said:
The server occasionally re-numbers the message IDs. Whenever it does this,
all the messages appear "new." Some servers do this when too many emails are
kept. Some do it when certain quotas are hit, or when specifically
instructed to.

Why in the world would anyone want to keep 90 (or even 30) days worth on the
server? Does he not keep them locally? Does he use more than one machine to
access them, and then only once a month? He might be much better off using
an archiving tool with Entourage instead of leaving them on the server that
long.

The only workaround I know of is to delete the mail from server more often.
Also, have Entourage delete emails on the server when they are deleted
locally reduce the number of stored emails.

Keith Esau
[email protected]
Click to expand...

I have four machines all monitoring the same POP email account.
All machines are set to leave the email on the server.

PowerBook G4 (10.2.8) using Entourage 10.1.4
Cube (9.2) using Outlook Express
emac (10.3.1) using Mail
PC using Windows XP and Outlook

With the first two machines, duplicate copies of the 'email remaining
on the server' are downloaded everytime mail is checked. No
combination of settings alters this and the 'Online status' symbol is
never shown (signifies the program knows that email remains on the
server I guess?)

The last two machines perform as expected and only download the
message once.

I have tried re-entering the email account information and rebuilding
the database.

Anyone have any ideas why this is happening?

Incidently it didn't seem to happen with an email account from a
previous ISP.

cheers!
 
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