Filed under: Software, Bugs/Recalls, Bad Apple, Snow Leopard
Read that email again. And again.
Something seems rotten, at least for some Mac users, with the Apple Mail program. Apple support boards are lighting up with reports of email messages being downloaded multiple times. This problem seems to be mostly with POP mail accounts, but even IMAP users are seeing it. There is another Apple support thread here with 10 pages of comments from unhappy Mail users.I've noticed it myself twice. In the morning I bring up Mail and read what's come in overnight. Then a little later I re-open Apple Mail and the same messages download again. Of course my POP account is set to delete everything from the server, and my settings have not changed.
This is the first really bad behavior I've seen from Apple Mail since OS X came out in 2001. This most recent glitch seems to have popped up in the 10.6.1 update. There are enough people reporting it that it seems like there is an issue for some users, but obviously not everyone is seeing it.
There have been some suggestions posted, but while they worked for some they did not work for all. Are you seeing this strange behavior? Did it start with 10.6.1? Let us know, and hopefully Apple will kick the code for the next update and put this bad boy to rest.
Thanks to Mark for the tip.

![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)


Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Pascal said 8:11AM on 9-24-2009
Same here for my Exchange Account.
I also have some strange"J"s in the normal text flow of some emails.
Cheers,
Pascal.
Reply
macriis said 8:22AM on 9-24-2009
The strange "J" is shown when an Outlook 2003/2007 users has insert a smiley :-). When you do that in Outlook 2003/2007 (and use Word as the e-mail editor) Word replaces the ":-)" with a graphic showing a smiley. That smiley doesn't exist on all computers.
Pascal said 8:41AM on 9-24-2009
Thanks, didn't know that. J sorry, :)
axxll said 2:34PM on 9-24-2009
same here with POP and xchange accounts
PLUS, no "SENT" mail trail ( SENT folder is empty)
l33td00z said 8:13AM on 9-24-2009
On 10.6.1. All accounts: work POP3, Gmail IMAP, Hotmail POP3 have zero problem.
Reply
iGO said 8:35AM on 9-24-2009
Same version here, 10.6.1
But I was getting repeated RSS feed entries in mail.
I would literally delete all the feeds I had read, go to another mailbox, then back to the feeds box only to see TWO of every one I just deleted.
The list grew so big, I deleted the entire RSS Feeds link in the side bar.
Hope Apple fixes soon.
Antonio Carlos Sil said 8:27AM on 9-24-2009
Same with me with my Exchange account.
The Mail app just stop receiving mails and I need to Quit and start i again to retrieve new mails.
Reply
KomputarGuy said 8:30AM on 9-24-2009
I am not having any issues with Mail, one POP and one IMAP Gmail.
Now having said that I will probably have issues later. :-P
Reply
Heimbachae said 8:32AM on 9-24-2009
I'm only using 1 Gmail account tied with mail, and I haven't seen any problems. Must be issues with some combination of multiple accounts.
Reply
Martin said 8:36AM on 9-24-2009
I'm seeing multiple messages sometimes. Thought I was going slightly bonkers!
Reply
wase4711 said 8:36AM on 9-24-2009
And here I thought it was another Comcast screw up!
Sorry Comcast, this one's on Apple!
Reply
Nick said 8:41AM on 9-24-2009
It happened to me with 10.6, but only with my Hotmail POP3 account. It was my first opportunity to utilize Time Machine for something other than the "wow" factor.
Reply
arjav said 9:08AM on 9-24-2009
This has been happening to me since I upgraded to 10.6. But only for my RSS feeds. Every time I quit mail and restart my mac. All my RSS accounts load several hundred messages from the past few weeks. Its really annoying and I do not know how to fix it.
Reply
Adam said 9:09AM on 9-24-2009
A very bad glitch which I have noticed over the past year or so is that sometimes (it has happened about 3 times) when I reply to an email, and usually only if I press reply quickly, the reply posts in the text from the email below on the list rather than the email I am actually replying to.
It happened agin yesterday but I spotted it. I wondered if it was something to do with me pressing reply before the email had downloaded from the server (I had already read the email on my iPhone.
Anyone else noticed this?
Reply
William Jackson said 9:11AM on 9-24-2009
I have seen occasional duplicate messages for some time with Mail and .mac.
Reply
traisjames said 9:14AM on 9-24-2009
I am not having that problem with any off my mail accounts but I am for my RSS...and only for one RSS feed...this one. For email I have a hotmail pop3, school's imap, school's new live email using imap, and gmail using imap.
Reply
Jason V said 9:13AM on 9-24-2009
This isn't limited to just the Mac Mail program. Mail that I have deleted off my iPhone Mail.app get downloaded again after I've deleted a few emails. My stored email cap is set to 50, so if my inbox falls under that, it will download however many emails it takes to get back to 50. I have to manually go to my webmail and delete emails I don't want.
Reply
loup407 said 5:15PM on 9-28-2009
same thing here with 10.6.1
Reply
Rick said 9:25AM on 9-24-2009
I see this in junk mail sometimes, but not exactly the same symptoms:
- Junk unread count shows 4
- There are actually 8 marked as unread (4 messages that each have a duplicate)
- I expand the main Junk folder and go through each of my 4 individual Junk folders and there are only 4 unread total (no dupes)
- I click on the main Junk folder again and the dupes are gone
- I click off the junk folder and then back on it and the dupes show up again
It must be a rendering thing because I don't think I actually have two copies of the message, since they only show up as single messages in the individual Junk folders for each account
Reply
Andy Bennett said 9:36AM on 9-24-2009
I came in to over 3000 new messages the day after I upgraded my MacPro work. My home system (Mac Mini) had no such problem.
Reply