Sudden glitches with POP email accounts

[maggieomiller]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: Power PC
Email Client: pop

I have three POP accounts linked in to my Entourage. Everything has been running fine. Every account receives both Inbox email and Junk box email for me to sort through and all Sent messages were recorded and easy to find.

Suddenly yesterday email is filtering through the "Folders on my computer" Inbox instead of the separate accounts. Throwing everything in there including responses that I send as email. They appear as messages from myself to myself instead of remaining in the Sent folder under the addresses sent. Sometimes its duplicating messages and leaving them all over in folders in the account and out. The junk mail is appearing and disappearing and sometimes reappearing in different folders. I also have no way of knowing whether it is a duplicate message or if its new. Sometimes it marks it opened when it hasn't been and sometimes it marks something as new when its not. Today I got eight copies of the same message. Its like the entire thing has just gone crazy and I can't find anything.

My system automatically searches for updates and everything is currently up to date. Could one of these updates have caused this? I liked the way it was functioning before. Can I fix it?

 

[Ed Kimball]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: Power PC
Email Client: pop

I have three POP accounts linked in to my Entourage. Everything has been
running fine. Every account receives both Inbox email and Junk box email for
me to sort through and all Sent messages were recorded and easy to find.

Suddenly yesterday email is filtering through the "Folders on my computer"
Inbox instead of the separate accounts. Throwing everything in there including
responses that I send as email. They appear as messages from myself to myself
instead of remaining in the Sent folder under the addresses sent. Sometimes
its duplicating messages and leaving them all over in folders in the account
and out. The junk mail is appearing and disappearing and sometimes reappearing
in different folders. I also have no way of knowing whether it is a duplicate
message or if its new. Sometimes it marks it opened when it hasn't been and
sometimes it marks something as new when its not. Today I got eight copies of
the same message. Its like the entire thing has just gone crazy and I can't
find anything.

My system automatically searches for updates and everything is currently up to
date. Could one of these updates have caused this? I liked the way it was
functioning before. Can I fix it?

This sounds like the actions of rules that you might have sent
inadvertently. Check both Rules and Mailing List Rules on the Tools menu to
see if there are any rules in either place that might be causing this
symptom.

 

[maggieomiller]

Hi Ed! Thanks so much for responding. I checked both the Rules and Mailing List Manager and I don't have any in place. Maybe I should just a build a rule to put them back! It just seems weird to have this problem all of the sudden. I was thinking of removing all the accounts and then adding them back in just to see if that clears up the issue. Maybe it just needs a clean start again. ?

 

[Diane Ross]

I have three POP accounts linked in to my Entourage. Everything has been
running fine. Every account receives both Inbox email and Junk box email for
me to sort through and all Sent messages were recorded and easy to find.

What you are describing is not POP. All POP accounts go to the same Inbox.
IMAP accounts have their own Inboxes.

Under Tools in the Menu bar, select Accounts. If they are POP accounts, then
you will see (POP) after the name. If they are IMAP, then you will see
(IMAP) after the name.

If they are IMAP accounts, then under Rules, click on the Mail (IMAP tab)
and check the rules there.

 

[maggieomiller]

Hi Diane! Actually under the accounts it doesn't say either one, neither (POP) or (IMAP), after the names. But you are probably right, I'm not sure I have the correct term here. But I have checked the Rules and I have none applied on any of the tabs under Mail.

I went through and erased all accounts and re-added them. This seems to have cleared up some of the craziness. All the emails appear to be in their correct corresponding folders even though I'll have to sort through the junk mail more thoroughly again. It keeps reloading old messages as duplicates but not all of them, which is strange. I'm also receiving double for all my outgoing messages and they're showing up in both Inboxes but I think I can live with this as long as I'm able to keep everything incoming straight.

Thank you all for your help. I'm not sure all my problems are over (obviously) but its getting better.

 

[Diane Ross]

It keeps reloading old messages as duplicates but not all of them, which is
strange. I'm also receiving double for all my outgoing messages and they're
showing up in both Inboxes but I think I can live with this as long as I'm
able to keep everything incoming straight.

This can happen if you rebuild the Entourage database or the server does
some kind of rebuild and the message IDs get reset.

Do this for me to check the validity of your database. Under File in the
Menu bar, select Export as Entourage archive (.rge) file. Leave all
selected. If it all exports that a good sign, but I also want you to create
a new Identity under Entourage in the Menu bar using Switch Identity. When
it open, do not bother entering account. Select File import and import the
main.rge file you created. You'll then see a new folder in the folder window
named main.rge. If you toggle it open you'll see all your folders. Normally
you would drag all to the correct location under the Inbox, but this is a
test and if you got this far your database is good.

If you want to do another check download "Archive Message Folders" script
by Jolly Roger and export all your messages as MBOX files. The script would
fail on a folder with corruption.

This teaches you a lot about backup along with verifying your files.

Obviously, if you find corruption, you will need to move into a new
Identity. There are ways to get your data out as long as you can open your
Identity.