Mail gets the same messages again and again ... 29 500 messages unread ...

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giaguaragiaguara
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014




This is the second time this has happened in a month. Mail.app gets some messages again and again and again ... The first time it was a (personal) message from someone at apple that multiplicated to 5400 +++ times, this time the multiplicated message seems to be again from Apple, but the one telling my mac.com account can now work as a single login ... I have trashed about 2-4000 messages of this already, and I'd be rather curious to see how multiple the messages can really arrive but I'm afraid to leave mail.app running overnight as I'd probably find my hard disk exploded by the morning. By now I have nearly 30 000 messages, of which all except about 60 - 80 are multiple or from apple ... What should I do? Try to move the messages I need to conserve, to other folders and then bounce these 30 000 messages?



Why does this happen? Has it happened to others of you? It can't be screwed mail.app preferences, as it doesn't do it always.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    formerlurkerformerlurker Posts: 2,686member
    Apparently it's a single "corrupt" email... or perhaps Apple's service actually hiccuped and sent you 100,000 or so messages



    My advice in this case, no matter the ISP, is usually to login to the Webmail interface and delete the fukked-up message (and any/all duplicates in this case), then try the email client again. If it keeps failing, try deleting your com.apple.mail.plist file from Preferences in your Home/Library folder and try again.



    You might also try the Rebuild Mailbox command under Mailbox menu.
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  • Reply 2 of 12
    giaguaragiaguara Posts: 2,724member
    There are other new mails too in the ibox, but only those from apple are that much corrupted to come again and again. Like when this happened the first time. I'd rather not trash prefs, as it'll be a pain in the apple to guess back even hald of my passws...







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  • Reply 3 of 12
    kennethkenneth Posts: 832member
    Oh Dear... hope you are not on a 56k...receiving 1xxxx mails on that will take forEver.
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  • Reply 4 of 12
    123123 Posts: 278member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Mulattabianca





    This is the second time this has happened in a month. Mail.app gets some messages again and again and again ...







    I currently have about 6500 mails in my inbox. If I leave Mail open (checking for new mails every minute (POP3)) and at the same time check mails on a different computer (which locks /var/mail/blabla as does POP) it's likely that something goes wrong: Mail thinks that all messages are new and downloads the 6500 mails again. Since it is a 150+MB download, it's highly annoying. I don't know what I can do about it other than moving the mails to another mailbox on the server (but I don't want to do that since... I don't know, Apple should fix that bug and I shouldn't be forced to do anything... obviously, it's not annoying enough).



    Does anybody know how to prevent Mail from downloading the same mails again? Also since I now have every mail about a dozen time and I'd like to delete 11 copies of every mail, is there a way to sort mails by the internal arrival number (as in 10.1) instead of the arrival date? Or shall I just use the "head" command?



    thanks
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  • Reply 5 of 12
    giaguaragiaguara Posts: 2,724member
    47'100 unread in inbox, unable to receive new mail... i'm on covad's dsl or cable (?) that is pretty fast to download all those 3 messages 47 000 times ... I sent a feedback to .mac, will eventually log in webmail to cancel the messages ... and if this happens a 3rd time, I'll use Mutt
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  • Reply 6 of 12
    thuh freakthuh freak Posts: 2,664member
    i had a similar problem, only i didn't let it get that far out of hand. after my messages had dublicated once, i looked into fixing the problem. i think its caused by apple checking the mailserver and seeing 'new' messages, then downloading these supposed 'new' messages, but not informing the server that they are now 'old'. so next time it checks, it says, "hey. new messages" and re-gets them. the way i solved it was to have it delete the messages from the server after retrieving them. this also helps out your mail server, because they dont have to maintain your disk space. theres two things to mention about this, one you have to be careful when deleting your local copies of messges, cuz they are now ur only copies. and second, if you access the same mailbox from several different places/programs the messages won't be there once you get&delete them with Mail. there is an option in the preferences, i think it might be specific to each mail account you have (i had 2 or 3 accounts acting up with the same problem).
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  • Reply 7 of 12
    giaguaragiaguara Posts: 2,724member
    The accounts are set to take mail from server.



    This about deleting mails from webmail then ...







    (i have more than one .mac to go and delete them ...) ...
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  • Reply 8 of 12
    giaguaragiaguara Posts: 2,724member
    "select all" is select those 10 messages and no way doing that for 20 000 messages in 2 accounts (and 13 000 in 2 others) ...
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  • Reply 9 of 12
    skipjackskipjack Posts: 263member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Mulattabianca

    "select all" is select those 10 messages and no way doing that for 20 000 messages in 2 accounts (and 13 000 in 2 others) ...



    I know this doesn't help much, but in the Mail preferences at Mac.com you can change from 10 messages per page up to 50 messages per page.
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  • Reply 10 of 12
    giaguaragiaguara Posts: 2,724member
    Deleting them even 50 by 50 ...



    I called Apple telling them about having got over 52 000 mails, they should be having a look ...



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  • Reply 11 of 12
    doctorgonzodoctorgonzo Posts: 529member
    I had this happen just last night.



    I have Mail.app set to erase mail off the server after I recieve it, but suddenly it started downloading things that I had already grabbed 2 weeks ago.
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  • Reply 12 of 12
    giaguaragiaguara Posts: 2,724member
    I called about it .. no explanation.



    But I think I found the reason for this ... only NOW.



    When i have my main mail.app account a .mac, but not the same .mac that i use in idisk, it seems to generate various problems - and this amongst them. _IF_ i put my preferred mail account to the system preferences, it automatically puts the same account to idisk. _THEN_ later if i change idisk account, it simply changes the preferences on the main mail account. So that becomes hybrid of what it was before, and what the new idisk account suggests it. I wish i could prevent this, without having to use the SAME mail and idisk account. SO, after this there are 2 accounts that receive duplicate, and this seemed to generate that flow.



    I was scared to open mail since this woe, and found only today the reason. Or at least removing the screwed mail account, and creating a new one seemed to fix it. I got rid of those supermultiple emails. \
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