How To Remove Duplicate Items In Microsoft Outlook?

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Microsoft Outlook is a great tool for managing your email, tasks, and calendar. however, if you have a lot of items in your mailbox, it can be difficult to keep track of what’s new and what’s deleted.

Also, when you import items into ms outlook and the duplicate detection option is turned off, outlook skips the duplicate items. A common task that many people need to do is remove duplicate items from their Outlook mailbox. but once the import is complete, you cannot easily remove the duplicate items. focus on the phrase “you can’t easily remove duplicate items“. this means you can remove the duplicate elements, but not easily.

To help you remove duplicate items in Microsoft Outlook 2016, 2019 and all earlier versions, please read this entire post carefully.

how can duplicate elements become problematic for you?

microsoft outlook is among the featured applications offered with microsoft suite. To ensure smooth performance, Outlook requires a lot of resources. Outlook users commonly encounter message and email duplication from time to time. you will probably face below mentioned problems at some point.

duplicate emails cause confusion. the user cannot confirm if an email was answered or not. If you keep replying to the same email multiple times, it will lead to more confusion among team members and customers.
Duplicate emails increase the size of Outlook data files unnecessarily. Outlook app becomes slower. negatively affects business productivity. it takes longer to access and reply to new emails.
if outlook is configured with exchange server or office 365, duplicate items will increase exchange/office 365 mailbox size.
Outlook backups will take up more space and if you save your backups to any external cloud storage, you will have to pay more for the extra space.

reasons resulting in duplicate emails

The reasons are many and possible reasons are listed below.

misconfigured rulesif the rules are configured incorrectly, it will create confusion when you receive an email message. this results in duplicate emails.
short intervals in sending and receiving messagesif the inbox is updated infrequently, emails and other data in the mailbox will not be synced and will lead to data duplication.
account setting errorif the same email account is used on different devices, it is say, a laptop and a mobile device, will cause a repeated synchronization of the incoming message. this may be one of the reasons for email duplication in outlook mailbox.
improper mailbox settingswhen creating an account in outlook, if the mailbox settings are not are configured correctly, then you are likely to receive the same email and any message multiple times.
technical issuestechnical issue in mail server is also a reason behind the duplication of outlook items such instances occur frequently if you enable the “leave messages on the server” option. Microsoft Outlook inaccurate settings are regulated when two or more “move a copy to” rules are applied to specific incoming emails. this often leads to duplicate emails. Email duplication can also be caused by combining numbers of pst files into one file.

how to check for duplicate emails in outlook?

You can’t determine the duplicity of a single Outlook email at a single glance. you can use multiple properties of a message to check if it shows more than a single email. you can use the following fields for comparison:

subject
text
sender
recipient
attachment

If you run a search using such fields, you may see the same emails multiple times if you have duplicates in your mailbox. for a small number of duplicate emails, you can search the inbox emails based on the above fields (eg “subject”) and remove similar emails using the in-app delete option. but the same would be a difficult task when there are a lot of duplicate elements.

is it easy to remove duplicate files from outlook 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010 and 2007?

Cleaning up duplicate files from your mailbox is essential. it would be difficult for you if you have hundreds or thousands of these items. if the count is even higher, it would be almost impossible to remove those items manually. So, in short, removing duplicate items manually is not an easy task, and unfortunately, Microsoft does not provide an easy solution for this problem, even in Outlook 2013.

how to remove duplicate items in outlook?

Do you want to remove duplicate emails from your outlook?

Before you prepare to remove duplicate items from Microsoft Outlook, you need to find the cause of the problem and then resolve it. however, if you can’t do anything, here is the help for you. Here are five ways to remove duplicate files from outlook mailbox.

1) Configure the rules correctlyCheck whether the Outlook rules are configured correctly or not. If rules are not set appropriately, it will create confusion among different email folders. Configure the rules correctly. Also, ensure that only a single instance of the Outlook application is running. Close the extra instances of the Outlook.exe using the Task Manager on your system.2) Always select “Do not Import Duplicate Items” while importing Outlook itemsWhen you import of Outlook PST file items like mailbox folder or contacts using the Import/Export feature in the Outlook application, you must ensure to select the “Do Not Import Duplicate Items” option towards the end of the Import process to avoid the import of duplicate items in the application3) Set the inbox updates frequency

Open Microsoft Outlook.
Click on “Send/Receive Groups” under the “Send/Receive” tab.
Click on “Define Send/Receive Groups”. A new window will open.
In the new window, click on the group which you want to edit. By default, there is only one group named “All Accounts”. You can also create a new group by clicking on the “New” button.
Once you have selected the group, click on the “Edit” button.
In the next window, go to the “Schedule an automatic send/receive every ___ minutes” option and select the desired time interval from the drop-down menu.
Click on “OK” to save the changes.
You can also set different time intervals for different groups of accounts by repeating the steps from 3 to 7

4) Clean up the inboxOutlook has a number of utilities and add-ins, which can help you to clean-up the duplicate emails easily. Perform the below steps to clean up your mailbox:

start outlook.
select a mailbox folder.
select start > cleanup. Now, set the following options:
- cleanup thread will remove and move duplicate emails that are in the thread.
- cleanup folder will remove duplicate emails from any particular folder
- clean folders and subfolders will clean duplicate folders and subfolders
5) antivirus applicationif you are using microsoft outlook and you have duplicate items in your inbox, you can solve the problem by disabling your antivirus software. In some cases, antivirus software can cause Outlook to display duplicate items.

To disable your antivirus software, follow these steps:
1. Open your antivirus software.
2. Look for an option to disable or turn off the software. the location of this option will vary depending on the software you are using.
3. once the software is disabled, restart microsoft outlook.
4. check if duplicate items are still present in your tray if they are not, you can re-enable your antivirus software.
If you still see duplicate items in your inbox after disabling your antivirus software, you may need to remove the duplicates manually. To do this, select the duplicate items and press the delete key on your keyboard.

6) Third party outlook duplicate remover You can also opt for a reliable third party outlook duplicate remover tool to permanently remove outlook duplicates. Third party tools are developed in such a way that you no longer need to worry about duplicate emails or other duplicate items from outlook.

one such application is kernel for outlook duplicate remover. The software automatically finds and removes duplicate items from your Outlook. it is the best and most tested solution to remove duplicate items from outlook. gives you many options to find duplicate items; for example, you can specify a date range to search for duplicates. A free version of the software is also available that allows you to remove duplicate items. you can also delete ten items from each folder with this free outlook deduplicate tool.

follow the step by step process to remove duplicates in ms outlook:

step 1: launch the kernel for outlook duplicates remover application and click the add task button to add or create a new task .

Step 2: In the task creation wizard, provide task name and task description strong> and click next to continue.

Step 3: Now, check for duplicate items by selecting folders; you can prioritize the folders to find duplicate items with the up and down buttons and click the next button for the next step.

step 4: choose the type of operation you want to perform on the duplicate items searched by the software and click next.

Step 5: In this step, you can compare the emails and other items by selecting the properties as shown in the screenshot. click the next button for the final step.

Step 6: If you want to save the progress report of the task, click save report and finally press the finish button.

As you may have noticed, there is no manual solution to find and remove duplicate items in outlook except read all emails and delete them. To save your precious time, you can opt for an automated solution like kernel for outlook dedupe remover.

conclusion

Duplicate items can be a nuisance in Microsoft Outlook, but there are several ways to remove them. we have summarized the best methods for you here. All of these methods are pretty simple and straightforward, so follow the instructions carefully to get rid of those pesky duplicate items.

Also, if you are looking for a reliable and easy-to-use solution to remove duplicate items from your Microsoft Outlook mailbox, Outlook Duplicate Kernel is the perfect choice. can help you get rid of all the duplicate data in your mailbox in just minutes, so you can regain control of your inbox and focus on more important tasks. To learn more about this powerful tool or download a free trial, visit our website today.

watch video: to know the complete process of outlook deduplicate tool