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E-Mails Going Crazy !!!!!!!

bostonbob
Grasshopper

So I just checked my e-mails and there seems to be some sort of problem.After about 5 minutes hundreds and hundreds of e-mails are appearing in my Inbox - some of them from as far back as 2016 !!!!! And the total has now reached over 1,000 new e-mails. It's going to take a long time to check each one to see if it needs to be saved or not. What the hell is going on here ????

EDIT: the total is now over 2,300 " new " e-mails in my Inbox

EDIT: well it finally stopped and the new grand total is 7,211 😡

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> It looks like I got a double of every e-mail that was s...

mdk
Legendary Grand Master

> It looks like I got a double of every e-mail that was still in my Inbox and then got copies of thousands of e-mails that were already deleted.

It seems that Windows Live Mail on your computer lost "synchronization" with your messages stored on Shaw's mail-server. Your use of WebMail shows that there are over 9400 messages still on Shaw's mail-server. So, W.L.M. re-downloaded everything that was still available on Shaw's mail-server, causing the duplication in your INBOX.

Note that if you delete a message, the message is moved to your "Trash" folder.  But, until you delete the message from that folder, it is not PERMANENTLY deleted --  if you want, you can move any message from your "Trash" folder back into your "Inbox" folder -- meaning that it is not "deleted".  After you PERMANENTLY deleted, it will not be available via Shaw WebMail, and it will not be available within W.L.M.

HINT: Microsoft terminated support for W.L.M. a few years ago, and removed its "installer" file from their file-server. So, if you have a copy of that "installer" stored on your computer, do not delete it!

 

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What program are you using to view your messages?  Outloo...

mdk
Legendary Grand Master

What program are you using to view your messages?  Outlook? Windows Mail?  Those programs can sort the inbox, e.g., by Subject or by Date or by Size or by Sender.  Are you sorting by Date, putting oldest messages (2016?) at the top, or at the bottom? Click on a column-heading of the menu of messages, to change the sort-order.

E-mail programs can use the IMAP protocol -- it compares to leaving all your letters delivered by Canada Post into your mailbox on the outside of your home, and then you "peek" at the letters, and throwing a few selected letters into your recycling Blue Box -- all the other messages stay in the mailbox.

If you use multiple E-mail programs, e.g., Shaw WebMail and Microsoft Outlook, both programs give you the same "preview" of what Shaw is storing for you on their mail-server. Of course, the list of messages can be sorted differently, e.g., "oldest first", or "by alphabetically by Subject".

Are you using, for the first time, a different computer, via IMAP, to view all your messages?

 

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Hey mdk - thanks for your help. I'll answer your question...

bostonbob
Grasshopper

@mdk wrote:

What program are you using to view your messages?  Outlook? Windows Mail?  Those programs can sort the inbox, e.g., by Subject or by Date or by Size or by Sender.  Are you sorting by Date, putting oldest messages (2016?) at the top, or at the bottom? Click on a column-heading of the menu of messages, to change the sort-order.

E-mail programs can use the IMAP protocol -- it compares to leaving all your letters delivered by Canada Post into your mailbox on the outside of your home, and then you "peek" at the letters, and throwing a few selected letters into your recycling Blue Box -- all the other messages stay in the mailbox.

If you use multiple E-mail programs, e.g., Shaw WebMail and Microsoft Outlook, both programs give you the same "preview" of what Shaw is storing for you on their mail-server. Of course, the list of messages can be sorted differently, e.g., "oldest first", or "by alphabetically by Subject".

Are you using, for the first time, a different computer, via IMAP, to view all your messages?

 


Hey mdk - thanks for your help. I'll answer your questions the best I can:

- I'm only using Windows Live Mail 2011 and have not changed any settings for years. I know how to change the order ( by date or by sender ) so that will help a bit to speed up the process of going through over 7,000 e-mails to check and see what to keep and what to delete. It looks like I got a double of every e-mail that was still in my Inbox and then got copies of thousands of e-mails that were already deleted. Boy was I glad that there were only 12 new e-mails when I checked this morning.

- I am not using a new computer and can't use my tablet to check as my GF took it with her to Montreal.

 

Anyway - I just got off the phone with a SHAW Internet Tech and we checked my SHAW Webmail page and it had over 9,400 e-mails in my Inbox there too. Unfortunately he was not able to tell me why this happened which kind of sucks because if this happened because of something I did or didn't do then I want to make sure that I don't do the same thing again to cause it to happen again. Although I will admit that I prefer that these e-mails appeared instead of other e-mails disappearing that I want to keep.

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> It looks like I got a double of every e-mail that was s...

mdk
Legendary Grand Master

> It looks like I got a double of every e-mail that was still in my Inbox and then got copies of thousands of e-mails that were already deleted.

It seems that Windows Live Mail on your computer lost "synchronization" with your messages stored on Shaw's mail-server. Your use of WebMail shows that there are over 9400 messages still on Shaw's mail-server. So, W.L.M. re-downloaded everything that was still available on Shaw's mail-server, causing the duplication in your INBOX.

Note that if you delete a message, the message is moved to your "Trash" folder.  But, until you delete the message from that folder, it is not PERMANENTLY deleted --  if you want, you can move any message from your "Trash" folder back into your "Inbox" folder -- meaning that it is not "deleted".  After you PERMANENTLY deleted, it will not be available via Shaw WebMail, and it will not be available within W.L.M.

HINT: Microsoft terminated support for W.L.M. a few years ago, and removed its "installer" file from their file-server. So, if you have a copy of that "installer" stored on your computer, do not delete it!

 

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> I just got off the phone with a SHAW Internet Tech and...

mdk
Legendary Grand Master

> I just got off the phone with a SHAW Internet Tech and we checked my SHAW Webmail page and it had over 9,400 e-mails in my Inbox there too.

On your computer(s), your E-mail program[s] (including Shaw WebMail) all use the "IMAP" protocol to manipulate E-mail, not "POP" ("Post Office Protocol").

When a Canada Post letter-carrier puts a message into the mailbox outside your home, and then you take the message out of your mailbox, and bring it into your home, that is an example of "POP".  If somebody else then looks into your mailbox, it will be empty. If the E-mail program on your computer uses "POP", then the only place that the message is stored is on your computer.

However, the "IMAP" protocol leaves all the messages inside your mailbox (stored on Shaw's mail-server). So, anybody, including the Shaw technician, who "peeks" into your mailbox will see all 9400 items.  That's why Shaw WebMail shows those 9400 items. The advantage of using IMAP is that you can have multiple computers, and each of them accesses ("peeks" into) the same mailbox (on Shaw's mail-server), and sees the same messages. If you delete a message from your "Inbox", and then delete it from your "Trash" folder, the message is permanently removed from storage on Shaw's mail-server.

This does not explain why your E-mail program lost "synchronization", and downloaded all those 9400 messages.

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Nice simplistic explanation of POP v IMAP email. Other po...

rickatk
Master
However, the "IMAP" protocol leaves all the messages inside your mailbox (stored on Shaw's mail-server). So, anybody, including the Shaw technician, who "peeks" into your mailbox will see all 9400 items.  That's why Shaw WebMail shows those 9400 items. The advantage of using IMAP is that you can have multiple computers, and each of them accesses ("peeks" into) the same mailbox (on Shaw's mail-server), and sees the same messages. If you delete a message from your "Inbox", and then delete it from your "Trash" folder, the message is permanently removed from storage on Shaw's mail-server.

This does not explain why your E-mail program lost "synchronization", and downloaded all those 9400 messages.


 

Nice simplistic explanation of POP v IMAP email. Other points to consider, IMAP is a component of cloud computing and has been around since before the term cloud computing was even coined. Also, the Shaw email product may actually be contracted out to another party to manage for Shaw. That certainly is the case with TELUS.

If you want to remove those troubling email duplications make sure your email client is set to remove the emails from the server when deleted. You are best to delete the emails from your email client on your own computer as you can batch delete or otherwise select multiple emails much quicker using your email client software on your local device.

 

 

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