Remove Duplicate Items (emails, contacts and attachments) in Outlook 2010

MS Outlook is the email client application that comes with Microsoft Office suite, which is generally used in corporate. Besides sending/receiving emails, users can manage Contacts, Calendar, Notes, and schedule Tasks efficiently on a user-friendly GUI (Graphical User Interface). As compared to other email service providers, MS Outlook is much faster.

Email sending and receiving process is well synchronized such that whatever is sent (whether in the form of text or media files) is received intact. However, sometimes due to any issue in the client or server, email delivery is failed, delayed, or the emails are duplicated. You might also have received an email twice or more, i.e. the same email is received multiple times. Sending or receiving duplicate mails on MS Outlook is the issue that frequently comes across. Email redundancy may become the cause of Outlook PST (Personal Storage Table) corruption when it gets oversized. 

It is recommended to manually check if the email is actually duplicate, or some difference is there. Moreover, you can manually check email settings in Outlook 2010 to inspect why you are receiving duplicate emails in the following ways:

Check if ‘Leave copy of message on server’ is enabled

When ‘Leave copy of message on server’ option is enabled, then server keeps a copy of every single email except the inbox. When such emails are accumulated excessively, every time Outlook checks for new emails after specified amount of time, then most likely you may receive duplicate emails.

 Following are the steps to check and reset the duration for Outlook to check for emails:

• Click File menu, choose Options sub menu, and then click Advanced.
• Scroll down and click Send/Receive.
• Reset the time (in Minutes) specified next to Schedule an automatic send/receive every to 15 or more.

Note: Large amount of emails on the server requires considerable amount of time.

Duplicate Email Accounts

Having duplicate email accounts configured in Outlook could be the cause of duplicate emails. Imagine duplicate email accounts and the situation as described above collectively. The overall emails on the server may become undisciplined and the likelihood of receiving duplicate emails is enhanced.

 Follow these steps in order to check if any duplicate account is there:

• Click File menu, choose Info, and then click Account Settings.
• Choose Account Settings in the context menu.
• In the opening window, if you see multiple email accounts or the same account multiple times, then select one by one both and click Change option to view its full information.
• If both accounts are found as same, then remove either of them.

Way to Handle Duplicate Mails

Outlook and many other email clients facilitate creating folders to store emails received from different users. Move all emails received from one sender to a folder with his name, and then remove duplicate ones. Similarly, create another folder for another sender. In this way, you can manage emails and remove duplicate ones at the time of moving them to their respective folders.

Though the process is time-consuming and requires considerable user involvement, Outlook duplicate remover software by Stellar Phoenix is better alternative to handle the issue.

Reference:

www.stellaroutlooktools.com/scan/outlook-duplicate-remover.php