You receive duplicate messages in a POP3 email account in Microsoft Entourage 2008 for Mac or in Microsoft Entourage for Mac 2004.

This problem may occur for any of the following reasons:

• A duplicate email account exists
• Messages have been forwarded to another account
• Sever technicians perform maintenance on the server and then reset the account
• The Entourage database becomes corrupted

To resolve this problem, follow these steps.

Step 1: Verify the rules

Make sure you have not created rules that might cause messages to be duplicated. To do this, start Entourage, click Tools, click Rules, and then verify each rule.

To find a problem rule, turn off all rules, and then turn them back on one at a time until the problem recurs. Additionally, look for rules whose actions move or copy messages to the Inbox or to a custom mailbox that is located in the Inbox. These actions create a loop in which a message that is received in your Inbox triggers the rule and causes the message to be moved or copied to the Inbox again. To resolve this problem, edit the rule to move or copy messages to another mailbox other than the Inbox.

Step 2: Remove duplicate accounts

Start Entourage, and then click Accounts. If you see duplicate email accounts, select each duplicate account in the list to select it, and then click Delete.

Step 3: Move webmail messages to another folder

Move messages on the server to another folder. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open a browser window, browse to the web-based email page, and then log in to the web-based email account.
2. Move all the messages from the Inbox to a custom folder. That is, move the messages to a folder other than the default Outbox, Deleted, or Sent folders. If a custom folder does not exist, create one.
3. Start Entourage.
4. If duplicate messages are still received, you can either leave the messages in the custom web-based folder for future reference or you can restore them to the Inbox. Then start Entourage to test it. The duplicate messages may be delivered one more time. If this occurs, exit and then start Entourage again. If the duplicate messages continue to download repeatedly, go to the next step.

Step 4: Rebuild the database or create a new identity

To rebuild the Entourage database or to create a new identity, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base, and then follow step 1:

268322 (http://kbalertz.com/Feedback.aspx?kbNumber=268322) How to rebuild your identity database in Entourage 2008 for Mac and Entourage for Mac 2004 to resolve most problems