Duplicate IDNet.com email messages

cs2008 · Jul 15, 2008, 19:10:31

Hi,

Today, I noticed that my email client (Apple Mail) decided to download all of my email messages from the server again (all 680 of them !) I assume this was due to the aftermath of the recent email problem.

Any idea how I can delete all the duplicate messages, without going through them all manually ?

Cheers,
Chris.

Rik · Jul 15, 2008, 19:12:58

Hi and welcome to the forum.

I'm not an Apple person, Chris, so I don't know an answer. If no-one else chimes in, have a quick word with support - they speak Mac.

You are right in surmising that it's to do with the restoration of the data from the old mail server, btw.

cs2008 · Jul 15, 2008, 19:15:03

Rik,

Thanks for the amazingly quick reply !
I'll send a message to support.

Cheers,
Chris.

Glenn · Jul 15, 2008, 19:20:20

Chris, I don't have a Mac myself, but this may help http://www.hawkwings.net/2005/10/13/removing-duplicate-messages-in-apple-mail/

Lance · Jul 15, 2008, 19:46:39

Can you sort messages by read/unread? That should make it simple to get the duplicates together, select them all and delete them!

Sebby · Jul 15, 2008, 20:05:54

cs2008 · Jul 16, 2008, 12:29:33

Quote from: Glenn on Jul 15, 2008, 19:20:20
Chris, I don't have a Mac myself, but this may help http://www.hawkwings.net/2005/10/13/removing-duplicate-messages-in-apple-mail/

Glenn,

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

Lance,

Your idea probably would have worked, had I not already marked them all as read !

Chris.

Bill · Jul 17, 2008, 10:37:43

Sort them by "Date Received", all the re-sent ones should then be together and be easier to get rid of.

Lance · Jul 17, 2008, 12:37:12

I'm afraid that won't work, Bill. The date received is the date it was received into the mailbox, not the mail client.

Bill · Jul 17, 2008, 17:20:12

Not as a general technique admittedly, but all the duplicate messages (from Trevor?) arrived here with the same timestamp, and were thus easy to group together.

Rik · Jul 17, 2008, 18:00:38

Alas, poor Trevor, I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times

But Trevor is now dead.

Glenn · Jul 17, 2008, 18:21:41

What was the cause of Trevor's demise?

Rik · Jul 17, 2008, 18:23:45

A mass of SCSI errors, but I'm not sure whether that was disk or controller, Glenn. I'll hear more when Simon is back from his holiday. It does make me wonder if Dell did the repair correctly last year.

Tacitus · Jul 17, 2008, 18:27:39

Quote from: Rik on Jul 17, 2008, 18:23:45
... It does make me wonder if Dell did the repair correctly last year.

So Trevor was the spawn of Dell......

Sebby · Jul 17, 2008, 18:29:07

Dell? Properly repair? I wouldn't have thought so. Repair at the cheapest cost to them, perhaps.

Rik · Jul 17, 2008, 18:31:52

Quote from: Tacitus on Jul 17, 2008, 18:27:39
So Trevor was the spawn of Dell......

Indeed he was.

Rik · Jul 17, 2008, 18:32:50

Quote from: Sebby on Jul 17, 2008, 18:29:07
Dell? Properly repair? I wouldn't have thought so. Repair at the cheapest cost to them, perhaps.

That's the obvious thought, Seb, corners cut so sharply that they met themselves coming back.

Glenn · Jul 17, 2008, 18:37:00

I have not any problems at work with Dell when calling for support/getting an field engineer to site through to a fix, on the PC's and laptops we have. They are also more reliable than the HP laptop and PC's that we are moving to.

Sebby · Jul 17, 2008, 18:39:16

Fair enough.

Rik · Jul 17, 2008, 18:42:51

I've always had good service from HP, Glenn, but no personal experience of Dell. OTOH, it is an unfortunate coincidence that the disk array on Trevor has failed twice in nine months.

Simon · Jul 17, 2008, 21:29:27

Quote from: Tacitus on Jul 17, 2008, 18:27:39
So Trevor was the spawn of Dell......

Well, he certainly went to Dell and back again!

Trevor.

Tacitus · Jul 17, 2008, 21:43:46

Quote from: Simon on Jul 17, 2008, 21:29:27
Well, he certainly went to Dell and back again!

Simon · Jul 17, 2008, 21:50:44

lee · Jul 17, 2008, 22:04:35

Hi Chris,

I feel like the lone gunman here...but I am a mac freak. Do you have a .mac/me account. If you do when the mail servers were changed over the preference file will have been confused(for want of a better word ) and run a script which would ask it to get all its imap email. You may or may n ot have noticed a new folder in your menu on the left as well.

the best thing to do is go to your library in your home folder>preference>com.apple.mail.plist

delete this file, logout and then log back in and open up mail. If this doesn't correct the problem go to your home folder again>mail> make a copy of this folder on your desktop just to be sure and then look for any replica folders with inbox's etc and delete this file.

Then reopen mail.

Hope this helps you out.

Lee

Den · Jul 17, 2008, 22:05:14

Poor Trevor was a Dell link went

naughty boy

Rik · Jul 18, 2008, 09:15:01

Thanks for that, Lee.

cs2008 · Jul 19, 2008, 16:46:37

Quote from: leehampton on Jul 17, 2008, 22:04:35
Hi Chris,

I feel like the lone gunman here...but I am a mac freak. Do you have a .mac/me account.....

Lee

Hi Lee,

No, I don't have a .Mac or Me account.
Fortunately, the Applescript which Glenn posted a link to worked a treat. All duplicates now removed !

Cheers,
Chris.

Glenn · Jul 19, 2008, 17:15:18

Good to see that the script resolved the issue Chris

LinLin · Jul 19, 2008, 17:50:27

Another Mac user here. I've never used AppleScripts before but want to try this. I've been getting duplicated emails for many months and would love to install this script.

Questions:
What do I do when I open scripts? Do I click "Enable GUI Scripting"?

Click on "Universal access" or "Set Up Actions"?

I assume "Set Up Actions" -- what do I select for the left part of the split screen?
And do I just cut & paste the lines of code on the right screen?

Thanks,

LinLin

Glenn · Jul 19, 2008, 18:11:10

LinLin, I think Chris would be best to answer that, I have never used a Mac

Tacitus · Jul 19, 2008, 19:49:51

Quote from: LinLin on Jul 19, 2008, 17:50:27
Questions:
What do I do when I open scripts? Do I click "Enable GUI Scripting"?

Click on "Universal access" or "Set Up Actions"?

I assume "Set Up Actions" -- what do I select for the left part of the split screen?
And do I just cut & paste the lines of code on the right screen?

Go to Applescript in the applications folder.

Open Script Editor and paste the text from the website in the open window. Then use the 'compile' button to compile the script. Go to File -> Save As -> Script -> Your name (= say trash duplicate msgs)

Now if you open Mail with the window where you have the duplicate messages at the front. Double click on your script and it should run.

I've not tried this as I don't use Apple Mail, but I think it should work. NB Use at your own risk. Before you run the script go to Library -> Mail and create a duplicate folder as a safety copy.

HTH, but I expect the experts will be along in a while.

Cheers,

Tac

LinLin · Jul 19, 2008, 20:08:27

Cool -- worked like a charm.

Thanks!

Tacitus · Jul 19, 2008, 21:37:40

Quote from: LinLin on Jul 19, 2008, 20:08:27
Cool -- worked like a charm.
Thanks!

No problem - glad it worked for you.

Rik · Jul 20, 2008, 10:02:15

I'll have to add a 'Mac Advisor' badge to your profile, Tac.

Thanks.

cs2008 · Jul 20, 2008, 15:55:58

The only thing I did differently to Tacitus was not to explicitly compile the code. It seemed to do this automatically when I saved the script. (OS X smartness again, I guess !)

I already had the script open when I opened Apple Mail, so just hit 'Run' and it did it's stuff.

It's the first time I've used Applescript too - quite impressed !

Tacitus · Jul 20, 2008, 16:32:39

Quote from: cs2008 on Jul 20, 2008, 15:55:58
It's the first time I've used Applescript too - quite impressed !

As you will see you can record actions. Set Record in the script editor and then do (more or less) what you want and it will record your actions. Compile and then run and it should replay what you have recorded. You will learn quite a bit just by doing this, and provided you're careful, you're unlikely to damage anything. I'm no AScript genius since most of what little I know comes from AppleScript for Dummies and trial and error

A lot of what you can do depends on whether the application is "Applescript Aware". If it is, it will have certain built in commands/hooks that can be used in AppleScript. Much depends on the application - obviously Apple's own are better in that respect than some of the others.

There are some helpful AppleScript forums around if you use Google.