Receiving Duplicate Email Copies

Subscriber Charles Verlegh wrote me this week to ask about a problem with his email service or program settings:

Dear Terry,
First of all, you’ l have to excuse me for my poor English, I am 71 years of age, and the English I know I just picked up by reading a lot of English books etc.

But I like to react to a mail sent to you by Ewan from the UK.

I have the same problem as he described, receiving all (and I mean all) of my mail in duplicate, wich
takes a lot of space in my mailbox.

I am not speaking about Spam, because there I can understand why they send it more than once.

I am speaking of personal mails of any kind, everything I receive, I receive in duplo.

It is very annoying to have to delete half of my mailbox in the morning, sometimes deleting by accident to much.

I have a broadband cable connection, my provider provides also my TV and telephone, the telephone and my computer make use of the same modem, (wich by the way is pronounced one off the best modems money can buy)

I controlled all my cables (on advice from my provider) but nothing helps. My provider can’t help me with this problem and says it is a computer problem, which I myself should fix.

Furthermore he said: better to receive mail in duplo than to receive nothing! I couldn’t laugh about this so called joke.

As you might have seen, I make use of the Incredimail mail program, so at one time I switched over to my Outlook Express, because I thought it could be a fault in this program, but that switchover didn’t solve the problem.

So, what can I do, to get rid of these duplicate mails (other than delete them?)

Best regards

Charles Verlegh – The Netherlands.

(I very much appreciate you mails with tips!!)

Charles, thanks for writing. I always like to receive emails from my subscribers. It’s good to know that readers like my newsletters and appreciate the help and tips.

I suspect that you have two (or more) accounts set up in Outlook Express — both accessing the same email account.

I think the first one says “leave a copy on the server” and the second one doesn’t have a checkmark in that box.

That way, the first entry grabs a copy, leaves a copy on the server. Then, the second entry grabs a copy and deletes the copy from the server.

Check in Outlook Express, Tools, Accounts, Mail.

Unless you have multiple actual email accounts, you should just have one entry in that section. (I think you have two entries there, with both entries set up to access the same email account). If you have two and both show the email address on the General tab, you should delete one of them.

Then, click on the Advanced tab. Unless you have a specific reason that you want to leave a copy of the email on the server (so you can see it from a web mail page, for example), in the Delivery section, uncheck the “Leave a copy of messages on server” box. If you do want it checked, I suggest also checking the “Remove from server after __ days” and select the number of days you want.