Duplicate emails when logging into more then 1 PC

[dmbfanatpsu]

We recently migrated from groupwise to exchange 2003. We have a couple users who log in\out on more then 1 PC. After the migration, when the users log into a different PC (different from the PC they normally use) and open e-mail(office 2003), all their emails are duplicated. It's like somewhere, something isn't triggered to make the .pst file aware that the emails have been downloaded, so the user ends up with duplicate emails all marked as "unread". If the user then logs into a different PC, same thing, so they could end up with multiple copies of all email messages. Not sure if I should be looking for problems on the PC's or Server?

 

[ShackDaddy]

What's the purpose of the .pst files? The server doesn't use them, but if they exist, they will complicate things and help create situations like this.

Is all the GroupWise mail now in Exchange mailboxes, and does all incoming mail go to Exchange directly? If so, then there shouldn't be any .pst files on the clients.

Normally in an Exchange environment, the Outlook clients have a "view" to what's on the server. They aren't actually downloading the mail, unless they are connecting to the server as POP3 clients. Is that what's happening?

Dave Shackelford
Shackelford Consulting

 

[dmbfanatpsu]

Yes they are connecting via POP3 clients.

 

[ShackDaddy]

In general, you should not be using .pst's. You should be storing the mail on the Exchange server and allowing the clients to "cache" their mail on their local clients. That gives you the same functionality as .pst's in regard to offline access, but gets rid of the issues you are having.

Each client that you use to check a mailbox has its own criteria for determining whether it has downloaded a particular mail item, so if you have two workstations use Outlook and have both save the mail to the same .pst that's stored on the server, you will get dupes.

I can't urge you strongly enough to get rid of .pst files and really use Exchange the way it was built to excel.

Dave Shackelford
Shackelford Consulting

 

[dmbfanatpsu]

OK for some reason this client has to use POP3 because they are sharing an exchange server that is off-site with another company.....not sure what the deal is with that. Anyways.....to fix this, I just unchecked "keep a copy on server" option on users PC's.
Thanks for the help!