If you have configured your e-mail accounts in Outlook Express you might have noticed that some time multiple copies of same e-mail is downlaoded into the inbox. You delete all of them and click on send and receive and it will start downlaoding the same message multiple times again. I am going to tell you how to resolve this issue with your Outlook Express.

Outlook Express can serve both asa pop3 and IMAP client. Hotmail uses IMPA protocol for delivering mails to Outlook Express and there are many other IMAP mail account provider so if you are using a IMAP account please skip this steps and follow the steps below it.

When Outlook Express is configured for POP3 mail access like yahoo or comcast (majority of providers provides pop3 account) it uses a file called pop3uidl.dbx to keep track of which message have been downloaded so that it can download only new messages. Sometimes this file becomes corrupted which results in the same messages getting downloaded again. So we will need a different copy of this file. Please do the following to recreate it.

- In Outlook Express click on Tools and Options.
- Click on maintenance tab.
- Click on Store folder button.
- It will open a small window with a path to the store folder.
- Copy the whole path.
- Click on start and Run.
- Click inside the run box and press Ctrl+V, it will paste the whole path we copied.
- Click on OK. It will open the store location.
- Close Outlook Express.
- In the folder that was opened, locate the pop3uidl.dbx file and right click on it and select rename.
- Rename that to pop3uidlold.dbx.
- Open Outlook Express and you will no longer receive any duplicate messages.

If you are using Hotmail or any IMAP account, that can happen if your Hotmail or IMAP account is the default mail account and OE is configured to both open directly to the Inbox (which downloads headers automatically) and check for new messages when starting (which also downloads headers automatically). To stop the duplicates, simply choose one option or the other, but not both.

In Outlook Express click Tools > Options, then remove the check mark for When starting, go directly to my ‘Inbox’ folder OR the check mark for Send and receive messages at startup.

If you already have duplicates showing, click Tools > Synchronize Account or Synchronize All.

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