This post will highlight reasons for duplicate items in Outlook and challenges come across due to duplicates. It also mentions few easy steps that will help you to remove duplicate data items from MS Outlook. Generally, import of items in Outlook and disabling duplicate detection option is the main cause to generate duplicates in Microsoft Outlook. It is not easy to remove duplicates from MS Outlook. It seems to be simple but actually it is not. Many users are struggling with this duplicate data issue in Outlook and want simple method to fix them. No matter in which Outlook version you have duplicated items, we will sort out your issues with this post.

How Duplicate Items Create Trouble For Users?

MS Outlook is in list of many pre-eminent applications due to its smooth performance and smart security features. But many times Outlook users find duplicate items generation issue. Here are the problems faced by users having duplicate data items in Outlook.

Duplicate items create confusion. Customers can’t confirm whether the email was replied to or not. If you respond to such an email, you may respond to the same message multiple times. Hence, team members and clients are confused.

Duplicate items increase Outlook mailbox size and make it slow. This will affect productivity of business and takes time in accessing or replying emails.

Outlook backup will consume higher space and to save backup to external cloud storage, users have to pay for it.

If Outlook is configured with MS Exchange, duplicates will increase size of Exchange mailbox.

Why Duplication of Items occur in MS Outlook?

There can be many reasons for generation of duplicate items in Microsoft Outlook:

Wrongly configured rules: If the rules are not properly configured in Outlook, they may create lot of confusion when you receive an email message. Thus, duplication of items occurs.

Short Intervals for sending/receiving emails: When inbox updates with low frequency, items in Outlook mailbox will not synced properly and hence lead to data duplication.

Error in account setup: If the same account is configured on various devices, this will lead to repeated synchronization of incoming emails and give rise to duplicate items.

Incorrect setting of the database: During account setup, if mailbox parameters are not set properly, you may receive the same email multiple times.

Technical issues: Due to technical problems in the server, customers can get duplicated email items. For example, if the option ‘Leave messages on server’ is activated. This leads to duplication of email items.

What may be the reason for creating duplication items, it will definitely affect productivity of MS Outlook. Hence, it becomes your first responsibility to remove duplicate copies of same emails and other items.

Check Duplicate Emails in MS Outlook – How?

It is not so easy to check duplicity of emails in Outlook. For this, various properties of emails need to check if it shows more than single mail.

By using given fields, you can check it:

  • Subject
  • Text
  • Recipient
  • Sender
  • Attachments

Use these fields, run search box and you will get items created multiple times in your Outlook database. Having small number of duplicate email items, the search is easy for users and after search, users can delete duplicated data items. But with large number of duplicate items, this becomes a tough task.

But using manual tricks, users can give a try to eliminate duplicate items. Let us go through them.

Possible Solutions to Get rid of Duplicate Data Items From Outlook

Configure Rules properly: By setting rules properly during configuration, then users may get rid of duplicates. Also, make sure only single instance of Outlook program should run in the system. You need to close other instances, if opened.

Through import, select "not to allow duplicates.": Make sure to choose the option "disallow duplicates" while importing the database into MS Outlook. Utilizing the Import/Export feature of Outlook, customers import data files, and during this, they are asked to include or exclude duplicates. You must choose "not to allow duplicates" at that time..

Set Inbox Update Frequency: By increasing Inbox update frequency, one can decrease chance of getting duplicate data items. To do this, go to Outlook then on Send/Receive. Here, define send or receive groups and set value between 15-30 minutes.

  • Clean up Inbox: Using Outlook add-ins, one can clean up duplicate data items.
  • In Outlook, select mailbox folder.
  • Go to Home and then Cleanup. Choose the given options:
  • Clean up Migration
  • Clean up folder
  • Clean up folders and subfolders
  • Go to Deleted Items folder and click on Empty to permanently delete the emails.

Antivirus program: By disabling email protection in Antivirus application, one can get rid of duplicated emails. However, we don’t recommend disabling email protection as this can result in virus attacks.

Professional Tool: If none of the technique work for you and you still find duplicated items in your Outlook then we suggest to go for third-party program.

By using Remove Outlook Duplicate items, one can smartly remove duplicate data items without any hassles. This program detects all duplicate emails and other items & removes them in few easy clicks. This is the best solution to find and fix duplicate items from Microsoft Outlook. Also by applying filters, one can remove duplicate data from Outlook. This excellent program permits adding OST file of Outlook as well to fix duplicates. A free evaluation copy is available that allows you to test the program by finding & removing duplicates. But users can’t save resultant PST with the free version.

Steps With The Software:

  1. Launch this utility and start it for fixing Outlook duplicate data items.
  2. Now, submit Outlook PST file from which you want to fix duplicates.
  3. Mark all or desired items to remove duplicates. Also, choose desired option to fix duplicates.
  4. Set location for saving the resultant Outlook PST file.
  5. Hit Remove duplicate emails button to initiate the process.

This is how by saving your time, you can comfortably draw out duplicate data items from Outlook.

Conclusion

Outlook users must check this post often as they often have to deal with duplicates. This article is totally all about removing duplicate mailbox items from Outlook. Before the solution, reasons & problems due to duplicated data items in Outlook are also discussed here. next, various technique are introduced to fix these duplicate removers. You can try out manual ways, and if they don’t work for you, use an automated program. It surely works to fix duplicates with its advanced features and simplified interface.