Duplicate emails in Outlook over POP

[Sue Smith]

This problem has been around forever and is still happenning in Outlook 2007.

However, I have found one of the reasons for it and hope that it helps
someone so it can be fixed.

If the POP conversion fails with an error, Outlook marks all messages in
that account as "gone". The effect is that next time you connect sucessfully,
it thinks they are all "new" and downloads them again.

I can see this happening by having logging turned on in Outlook 2007 and
trawling through the POP converstions. For instance:

===================================
2007.11.02 07:00:26 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): Port: 110, Secure: no, SPA: no
2007.11.02 07:00:26 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): Finding host
2007.11.02 07:00:26 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): Connecting to host
2007.11.02 07:00:26 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): Connected to host
2007.11.02 07:00:26 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): <rx> +OK Pop Server 4.1.4 Ready
2007.11.02 07:00:26 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): Authorizing to server
2007.11.02 07:00:26 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): [tx] AUTH
2007.11.02 07:00:27 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): <rx> -ERR Unknown command: AUTH
2007.11.02 07:00:27 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): [tx] USER xxx
2007.11.02 07:00:27 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): <rx> +OK Password required for
cdm
2007.11.02 07:00:27 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): [tx] PASS *****
2007.11.02 07:01:23 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): <rx> +OK Login successful
2007.11.02 07:01:23 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): Authorized to host
2007.11.02 07:01:23 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): Connected to host
2007.11.02 07:01:23 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): [tx] STAT
2007.11.02 07:02:13 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): <rx> -ERR still loading your
inbox. Please wait a moment and then try again.
2007.11.02 07:02:13 POP3 (mail.popmail.com): ==== Comparing server and local
blobs ====
2007.11.02 07:02:13 POP3 (mail.popmail.com):
1415056-115f679b258-3b2e44edee86a3c0fa45f92faf7d8b6f : gone
2007.11.02 07:02:13 POP3 (mail.popmail.com):
1415056-115f67c59ba-3b2e44edee86a3c0fa45f92faf7d8b6f : gone
: : :
===================================

An -ERR is returned to the STAT command, but Outlook then goes on to mark
all existing UIDLs as gone.

Now it may be that the server is not following POP protocol to the letter,
but in any case, if the client sees an error if should just end graceful as
if nothing had happened, and not abandon all messages.

Now...is there a workaround I wonder?


-s