This page contains answers
to common problems about Microsoft Outlook duplicates, where they
come from, and how to avoid them. All of the information contained
pertains to Microsoft Outlook, NOT Outlook Express.
This page is broken up into two parts, how to prevent the duplicates
from occurring in the first place and how to clean up the duplicates.
Prevention:
Many things cause duplicates
to appear, including synchronization with Palms, Blackberrys,
or Pocket PC PDAs, restoring Exchange public folders from backups,
using Netfolders, incorrect Outlook rules and many other reasons.
Preventing them from occurring in the future is the first step
to eradicating them.
1. How to stop receiving duplicate email messages
2. How to prevent sending duplicate email messages
3. How to prevent seeing duplicate names when viewing
the "Select Names" window after clicking "To:"
4. How to prevent duplicate appointments
Removal:
Removal is the second step to eradicating the duplicates. Once
you are sure that no more duplicates will be created, you can
use these methods to clean up the duplicates.
1. How to remove Outlook duplicates, including email,
contacts, appointments, and tasks
2. How to remove duplicate Outlook Today and Personal
Folders
3. How to remove duplicate Outlook address book
entries
4. How to remove duplicate holidays
5. How to remove duplicates due to Netfolders
Prevention Answers:
1. How to stop receiving duplicate email messages
There are a few things
you can check to stop duplicate email messages.
Start by checking Rules to be sure that copies are not being made
to the Inbox, and make sure that all your rules end in "Stop
Processing" actions.
Then check the task manager to be sure that there is only one
instace of Outlook running. Two instances of outlook.exe running
can produce two messages arriving at the same time. You will need
to then determine why two instances of Outlook were running in
the first place.
Another thing you can do is to delete/remove ALL your e-mail accounts
and recreate them. This worked for some people.
Also, if your running Outlook XP, be sure that you are at service
pack 2 or later. You can tell if you need to upgrade at Microsoft Product Updates.
Finally, another person had this happen when he had two e-mail
accounts set up - using two e-mail addresses, but the same POP3
incoming and same SMTP outgoing. What happened is that the second
account was getting the e-mails from the POP3 server before they
were actually deleted after the first account was finished. If
this is the problem you can disable the receive on the second
account. There is a Microsoft article explaining the problem more
thoroughly at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=284404.
2. How to prevent sending duplicate email messages
Sending multiple email messages can be the result of Norton Anti-Virus and Outlook combined. Apparently when Norton scans outgoing emails it may send it out twice. The quick fix is to change the Norton properties to not scan outgoing messages, but you may want to consult the Symantec Knowledge Base about your software.
3. How to prevent seeing duplicate names when viewing the "Select Names" window after clicking "To:"
What you may be seeing is an entry for an email address and one for business fax numbers. This is because Outlook considers fax numbers as "valid transport addresses". You can prevent these duplicate names from appearing by prepending "Fax:" before the number in the contact. This has the effect of preventing Outlook from seeing the fax number as a valid transport address, so you only get one name (the email address).
4. How to prevent duplicate appointments
Check to see if you have more than one Outlook running. Having more than one Outlook process running while synchronizing can lead to duplicate appointments. To see if you have more than one running, quit Outlook, open the Task Manager and go to the processes tab. Once there, click once on the "Name" column to sort alphabetically, then look for "Outlook.exe". If it's listed there, then highlight it and click on "End Process". Some people report finding up to four copies of Outlook running using this method. You should be able to resume your synchronization after performing this step.
Removal Answers:
1. How to remove Outlook duplicates, including email, contacts, appointments, and tasks
If you have just a few
duplicates, it may be easiest to manually remove them. For emails,
this is no problem but for any other Outlook item it is easiest
to view the items in a table view, then select the duplicates,
then delete them.
To accomplish this, go to View...By Category (or "By"
anything really). This gets the view into a mode you can work
with. Click either names or subjects (or any shown field) in the
column header (in the gray area) to gather similar items together.
You can then delete all the duplicates you find.
2. How to remove duplicate Outlook Today and Personal Folders
There are three things
you can try:
1) Right click on the folder and select "Close".
2) Close Outlook, then right click Outlook Icon on the desktop.
Select Properties, select Data Files. Remove the links to the
backup .pst file.
3) Under the folder named HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows
Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\Microsoft Outlook Internet Settings
you will have a series of folders with long hexadecimal numbers.
Two of the folder will point to your *.pst file. You will next
to export one of them (Registry | Export registry) and then delete
the exported hexadecimal folder. Start Outlook, if it is fubar.
Close outlook and import the registry file you just exported.
Export the other hexadecimal folder and delete it. Start Outlook
again.
If this is too scary, you can do this.
1) Export the folder named HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows
Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\Microsoft Outlook Internet Settings
2) Delete the folder named HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows
Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\Microsoft Outlook Internet Settings
3) Go to the folder named HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows
Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\
4) On the right, delete the value named: (Default Profile) "Microsoft
Outlook Internet Settings"
Now you can start Outlook. Outlook will start like it is in a
first run condition and you will have to open your old *.pst file
via a File | Open | Personal Folders. Select View | Folder List.
Right click on Personal Folders (the one that doesn't have Outlook
Today next to it) and select properties. Near the bottom is a
checkbox to have mail delivered to this set of folders, check
it. Restart Outlook and you're all set.
In addition, see this Microsoft Knowledge Base article "OL2000: Duplicates of Outlook Today and the
Folder List Appear in Outlook"
3. How to remove duplicate Outlook address book entries
In Tools...Addressbook
you may have to pick from a list that looks like this:
Outlook Address Book
Contacts
Contacts
Contacts
Contacts
Where only the last one has any contacts.
The way to remove this condition is to go to Tools...Email Accounts...Directories...View
or Change. Select your Outlook Address Book service, then change.
On the next page, delete the first 3 contacts folders that appear.
Close and restart Outlook and they should be gone.
4. How to remove duplicate holidays
Highlight the calendar,
go to View...By Category and look at the Holiday category, then
manually select and delete the duplicates.
This Microsoft Knowledge Base article may also help: How to Add and Delete Holidays in the Calendar.
5. How to remove duplicates due to Netfolders
Netfolders has been known to cause bugs and the feature has been taken out of Microsoft Outlook 2002. The only suggestion received so far has been to try deleting the net folders share and recreating it.
Can't find what you're
looking for on our site?
Try Microsoft itself first. This link will bring you to Microsoft's site which lists Outlook resources.
You can then use the Search bar in the upper left corner to narrow
down your results, or click on any of the displayed items.
Possibly the best web site for Outlook is SlipStick. SlipStick (a rustic term for a slide
rule) is a site run by Sue Mosher, author and columnist. Microsoft
references her site on its website. SlipStick is devoted to researching
and solving problems with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange
Server.
Lots of people know that Google is a search engine. However, they
also offer a complete 20-year Usenet Archive with over 700 million
messages (Usenet is a worldwide public discussion area with over
7,000 topic groups). One of the groups is devoted to Outlook.
The newsgroup is a peer to peer public place, and is not affiliated
with Microsoft, but it is a place where you can go to get help with your Outlook
problems.
Outlook Express:
Tomsterdam
is quickly becoming to Outlook Express what SlipStick is to Outlook.
It has a lot of "hands on" information about Outlook
Express.