Messages download more than once

[Metritype]

Mac OS 10.3.9, Entourage 2004

Occasionally, ALL of the messages I have left on the ISP mail server
will start downloading again. That can be a month's worth of messages.

Has anyone else run into this problem?

Is it an ISP problem? (Of course, they say "no.")

Might it be related to the Accounts option "Delete messages from the
server after they are deleted from this computer"?

Is there a solution -- other than going to the webmail and manually
deleting the messages from the server (which is the only way I have
found to stop it when it occurs)?

[D]

This happend to me for the first and only (to date) time the other day.
About a month's worth of messages that I had already downloaded but
left on the server (with the rule to delete them after 15 days) came
down again. Hasn't happened again so I have not done anything about it.
I just thought it was a glitch at the ISP end (Wanadoo in the UK). I'll
wait and see.

Cheers

[D]

Correction: about 15 days worth downloaded for the second time.

[Michelle]

I've had this happen to me off and on. Maybe once every few months.
My only "fix" has been to quickly quit Entourage before it gets too
far. Then I go into Yahoo and move all messages into another mail
folder (since Entourage only downloads from the "Inbox" folder". Then
reopen Entourage and have it "check mail". Since there's nothing in
the Yahoo Inbox, it downloads 0 messages and is fine from there.

I haven't figured out what causes it either. If you figure it out, I'd
like to know.

[jbl]

I've also experienced the same problem once in a while. I believe this
happens only to POP3 mail accounts. IMAP and Exchange mail accounts
are not affected.

When a POP3 mail account is set up to leave all mails on the server,
there is some sort of synchronization mechanism between Entourage and
the server so that Entourage knows if a particularly mail message has
already been downloaded and needs not to be downloaded again at next
connection. When this synchronization is broken, Entourage will
download mails on the server all over again as if they are all new.

My experience seems to be that the synchronization tends to be broken
when a connection session is broken, that is, a session for Entourage
to connect and fecth emails are interruptted unexpectedly. This is
definitely a problem with Entourage, not the server, for it happens to
only one machine at a time (I have email clients on multiple machines
getting emails from the same server).

To reduce the pain of deleting duplicated emails when the Entourage's
insanity strikes, I'd say the best way is to reduce the numbers of
mails being left on the server, or moving them out of the InBox if the
mails can be saved in other folders as most webmails do.

Lastly, if you do get hundreds of mails being downloaded all over
again, set it view preference from the "View" menu to "unread only",
then you can highlight all duplicated messages and delete them at once.

[Metritype]

I have a feeling your (jbl's) diagnosis might be correct. It has
occurred to me that this problem -- when it does occur -- occurs after
I wake the computer from sleep after there has been some "failure" to
download during sleep. I'm going to watch for that.

And the work-around I finally adopted is the one Michelle suggested.
It's really very easy. If a second download starts to occur, I will
quit Entourage immediately, go to web mail, and move all the old
messages into another folder.