T
Todd Walton
A person called because she had 34,000 copies of a specific email in
her folders. She can't delete all of these manually, though she got a
pretty good start: after a week she's down to 29,000! So I emailed
our email admins.
Later on the user called back. She had decided to trudge on and got
all of the emails manually deleted. So she tried to delete the search
folder that listed those emails. When she did Outlook 2007 locked
up. After a minute of waiting she killed Outlook in the Task Manager
and restarted Outlook. Now there’s 267,000 more of this same email!
I tried deleting some of the duplicates, but you can’t delete very
many at once or Outlook will run out of memory. However… after a
minute the emails started disappearing on their own. The message
count (bottom left corner) for that search folder just started
dropping.
I ran over to the Exchange admins to see if someone had gotten the
email I’d sent and was deleting them. Nope. In fact, they say they
have no way to mass delete emails. So I came back and remoted into
this person’s computer again. By this time the messages had all
deleted themselves. Once again we tried deleting the search folder.
Same thing: locked up, killed task, restarted Outlook, lots of
duplicates. We’re getting somewhere now.
I created a new search folder for mails from me and then sent her an
email. We tried deleting that search folder and it just went away.
Then we tried deleting another of her search folders that was empty.
It just went away. Then we tried deleting still another of her search
folders with emails in it… mass duplication!
When a search folder has emails in it and we delete the search folder
(but not the emails), they duplicate. If the search folder is empty
(no emails match that search) then it deletes without problem. Also,
the search folder I had just created deleted without problem.
My thinking is that there’s a bug in Microsoft Outlook that causes
search folders created in Outlook 2003 and opened in Outlook 2007 to
not want to be deleted. When you delete them they start spawning
duplicate emails.
-todd
her folders. She can't delete all of these manually, though she got a
pretty good start: after a week she's down to 29,000! So I emailed
our email admins.
Later on the user called back. She had decided to trudge on and got
all of the emails manually deleted. So she tried to delete the search
folder that listed those emails. When she did Outlook 2007 locked
up. After a minute of waiting she killed Outlook in the Task Manager
and restarted Outlook. Now there’s 267,000 more of this same email!
I tried deleting some of the duplicates, but you can’t delete very
many at once or Outlook will run out of memory. However… after a
minute the emails started disappearing on their own. The message
count (bottom left corner) for that search folder just started
dropping.
I ran over to the Exchange admins to see if someone had gotten the
email I’d sent and was deleting them. Nope. In fact, they say they
have no way to mass delete emails. So I came back and remoted into
this person’s computer again. By this time the messages had all
deleted themselves. Once again we tried deleting the search folder.
Same thing: locked up, killed task, restarted Outlook, lots of
duplicates. We’re getting somewhere now.
I created a new search folder for mails from me and then sent her an
email. We tried deleting that search folder and it just went away.
Then we tried deleting another of her search folders that was empty.
It just went away. Then we tried deleting still another of her search
folders with emails in it… mass duplication!
When a search folder has emails in it and we delete the search folder
(but not the emails), they duplicate. If the search folder is empty
(no emails match that search) then it deletes without problem. Also,
the search folder I had just created deleted without problem.
My thinking is that there’s a bug in Microsoft Outlook that causes
search folders created in Outlook 2003 and opened in Outlook 2007 to
not want to be deleted. When you delete them they start spawning
duplicate emails.
-todd