Finding and deleting duplicate messages (2000)

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I have been in the habit of using Outlook as a backup storage for my Outlook Express messages. I mainly use Outlook Express at home for email and when I accumulate a lot of messages, I run Outlook, import all the messages, and then purge them from OE. Unfortunately, I have ended up with many duplicate messages in Outlook!! Is there a way of getting rid of all the duplicates without selecting them one-by-one and deleting them?!?! I HOPE SO!!

Thanks in advance!

Drew

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Writing a program to do this will take some work. When I wrote something to scan through the Inbox it started with the oldest message first. If the items are always accessed in date/time order, you would have little problem checking for duplicates, but if they are accessed in the order they were added to the folder, then it would be more complicated.

Slipstick is a good source for utilities and add-ins. Maybe you can find something pre-built over there?

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Thanks for the input. I did end up trying SlipStick for some help and I found a utility that was suggested: Outlook Duplicate Remover. I tried it and had limited success. It keeps crashing during my efforts, but not until I get at least some duplicates removed. At that rate, however, it would take me at least three hours to complete the task!! Oh well. I also tried a shareware version of a utility that helped, but is limited to 20 duplicates at a time! That too would take too long. I figure I would only need to do this once or twice a year, so I’d rather find a FREE solution.

Drew

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Drew:

Google turned this up… see if it works for you:

Index of /
… Parent Directory 18-Aug-2002 03:12 – E2DBSetup.EXE 25-

Mar-2003 17:15 2.3M ODR5.EXE
http://www.simon.rundell.btinternet.co.uk/

It is, as is shown, odr5.exe… worked pretty well for me…

Regards,
Chuck Billow

Chuck Billow

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Thanks too for your comment. I did end up finding this utility, but it seems to crash intermittently on me. Not sure if I can fix it.

Drew

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Drew:

Sorry…

I’ll call out if I find anything else…

Regards,
Chuck

Chuck Billow

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It sounds like you are importing EVERYTHING that still is in OE – rather than referring to the last time you ran an import. Perhaps, you need to “quarantine” the old, undeleted messages in OE before you import. HTH

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