Sunday 23 March 2014

How to fix duplicate email problems in various Outlook versions 2013/2010/2007

Have you faced duplicate email issue in Outlook? Sometimes you are also receiving the same e-mail multiple times. Here are most common issues which lead to e-mail duplication:

What Problems you faced when your Outlook profile has:

A duplicate email message slow down the Outlook operation and also affects the performance because Outlook takes more memory, disk space and CPU usage to save mail items. When the Outlook mailbox reaches 2-3 GB, and if you don’t reduce the size of your mailbox then your Outlook will start hanging, freezing and not responding.

Why you faced duplicate email messages problem in Outlook:


  • In most of the cases, duplicate e-mails are faced by mail server issues. It occurs mostly if you activated the “Leave Messages on the Server” settings option. 
  • Second reason is incorrectly configured Outlook rules. If you applied two or more “move a copy to” rules on a certain incoming message, it also causes to duplicate email messages. 
  • If you merged several PST files into one, it also causes to duplicate email messages. 
  • When you configure multiple accounts in Outlook and aliases for the same mailbox. In this case, same account configured twice and alias is received in the same mailbox. 
  • One another reason is interrupted synchronization with a laptop or mobile device. Many times, synchronization could cause some duplicates items. It can be happen in many cases, like if you take example of contacts, it will clearly elaborate the problem. Like if you store phone contacts in your mobile by first name or last name & in Outlook by their full name. It will also cause the duplicate mail items.
  • Antivirus software or firewall also creates duplicate e-mails. 
  • When you recreate your mail profile and you have already choose the option to configure Outlook to leave a copy on the server (POP3 account), it will receive all the e-mails from the server again even when you have received them in a previous configuration.


There are some common reasons of Outlook email duplication. But email duplication makes your work more hectic and less productive.

How to resolve duplicate email messages:

Solve Multiple Accounts

To resolve duplicates mails from alias accounts, use following steps:

For Outlook 2007 and previous versions: 

Tools-> Options-> tab Mail Setup-> button Send/Receive-> button Edit…-> select the alias account-> uncheck Receive mail items

Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013

Send/Receive-> button Send/Receive Groups-> Define Send/Receive Groups…-> button Edit…-> select the alias account-> uncheck Receive mail items

This will resolve your duplicate email issues due to multiple accounts.

Solve Virus scanner / Firewall problems

When you integrate virus scanner with Outlook, it interrupts the Send/Receive request from Outlook. In this case, when Outlook does a Send/Receive and “thinks” it is talking to the virus scanner. This means that now the virus scanner is responsible for the connection. In this case, the connection to the mail server isn’t closed properly and you received already received e-mail again at the next Send/Receive interval. To resolve this issue, you have no need to integrate a virus scanner with Outlook.

If you configured firewall, it could terminate the connection. In this case, check/disable your firewall.

Solve Synchronization Issue

Synchronization Issue occurs because mobile phone is not a proper input device and insufficient contact storage properties on it. To make sure, that original Outlook contacts do not repeat in your mobile devise, you can create a new mail profile with no account. Now synchronize with that mail profile and use Outlook to easily clean up your contacts on your mobile.

Profile Recreation Problem

To resolve this issue, please use following steps: 

For Outlook 2002/XP and 2003

  • File-> Open-> Outlook Data File
  • Now move all the newly received e-mails to that pst-file.
  • Close Outlook and go to Control Panel-> Mail-> button Data Files…-> button E-mail Accounts-> button Next.
  • Now select original pst-file as the default delivery location
  • Press Finish.
  • Press the button Data Files and remove the other pst-file.


For Outlook 2007

  • File-> Open-> Outlook Data File 
  • Now move all the newly received e-mails to that pst-file.
  • Close Outlook and go to Control Panel-> Mail-> E-mail Accounts-> tab Data Files. 
  • Select the original pst-file and press Set as Default
  • Select the other pst-file and press Remove.  

For Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013

In Outlook 2010 & 2013, version, this procedure is little different because in this case outlook does remember which emails have been downloaded before to store information in the pst-file itself. When you configure your outlook account, you can specify the delivery location to an already existing pst-file.  To change the delivery pst-file for your account after you have configured your account use:

File-> Account Settings-> Account Settings-> select your e-mail account-> button Change Folder-> select New Outlook Data File… and browse to your original pst-file.

If you also want to keep your computer clean, please click on Settings button first and write down the location of the pst-file so you can physically delete the file as well.

Useful links to clean up Outlook Duplicate Emails: 

There are also available various tools in the market which help to remove Outlook Duplicate mails. Please check following links:

http://www.office-addins.com/-outlook-addins/duplicate-email-remover.php
http://download.cnet.com/Stellar-Phoenix-Outlook-Duplicate-Remover/3000-2369_4-75878167.html

Hope the article will help you to fix outlook email duplication issue. 

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