Luminous

iTrader: (3)

OK, this is an old issue that is driving me nuts. I really need a hand to sort this out.

A family member makes use of Outlook 2007 with a POP3 mail server. Messages are left on the server until deleted to act as a backup. Their machine broke and I have just reinstalled stuff to get everything up and running again.

I recovered their old .pst file from the original machine and then setup their email account. I have to recover the old .pst file as it has lots of really old messages that are not stored on the server. Of course, Outlook is damned stupid and when it connects to the email server it downloads everything to the new machine. This creates many thousands of duplicate emails.

I have full access to the old machine. There must be some way to copy over Outlook/Office settings to the new machine so that it does not realise anything has happened.

Please help, this is an issue I have run into before and not managed to solve

Sonic'

Before you migrate, go into the old email, accounts settings, and remove the tick that says keep messages on server, and do the same on the new machine too, that way all your messages willl be deleted from the server once and for all (after a fresh download of them that it )

Then you can use some utils (cant remember the name off the top of my head) that will scan and remove dupe emails

Once all the emails have been downloaded and deleted from the server, then you can re-enable the tick box for the backups of new emails

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

Yes, I think that is the only way to do it.

When we use Outlook with the email account only on one machine it always remembers which emails it has downloaded. In order for it to remember which emails it has downloaded, and which it has not there has to be a record somewhere that it is using. Clearly this record is not just within the .pst file, as when you migrated this would just work without the duplicate issue.

My goal is to try and find out how Outlook knows which mails are new, and migrate that information over to the new machine. That way all emails can be stored on the server....although without getting this person to use an exchange server I am not sure I will ever manage this.

Your method gets us up and running, but its not ideal.

Sonic'

I think, but may be completly incorrect here, but im sure the flag on new messages is based on the connecting IP, or maybe a flag on the client from when *it* last downloaded the mail

Thinking about it, its more than likely the client, when it sends a request for new mail, it must put something in the header to say 'I last connected at such and such a date, so give me all new mail since then'

Although as with all computer stuff it wont be worded quite like that and will no doubt be some mad code or something

There will be a last connection time/date stamp in the log files somewhere which it will use to pass to the server to collect new mail

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

That does make sense, its just a case of finding out where that bit of information is kept so that it can be migrated to another machine.

It is not entirely IP or MAC address related, as if you have on machine with two installs of XP the duplicate issue will still occur. With being the same machine using static IPs all of the above will be identical.

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

Cant you log into the server via web base log in and create a folder, move all important old emails over. Thus a backup is created and the PC wont download the old ones.

Should be a case of select all and move to folder. 2 minute jobby.

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

It would still download all the old ones, but at least you would know where they all are It would also help identify which of the duplicates you want to delete.

Yup, will try that next time I have to do this. It has to help in some way at least

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

huh ? why would it download them ? I have folders on my webmail and they never download and I dont have the tick to keep a copy on server so the computer would assume they're all new !!

Sonic'

If its a yahoo account and they have been moved into a folder under webmail, then yes as Pimmo states they will not download to your mail client, only the ones in the inbox

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

I would assume this is the case for all web mail ISP's too ! It is with VM !, Orange, Bethere, UKonline and Pipix.. (sp) all of which I've been with

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

Hmmm, i will have to try that. I always thought that if mails were moved into a folder on the web server they would still be downloaded. I'll give that a shot, that could be most helpful