How to Remove Duplicate Emails in Outlook 2019, 2016, 2013?

Jackson Strong | March 25th, 2023 | Outlook

In this article, you will get to know some measure tips & tricks to remove duplicate emails in Outlook 2019/2016/2013 whichever Outlook version you want. Below article has 3 top-notch solutions for this task.

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Most users these days use Outlook as their email client program. In businesses, it is commonly used. A typical Outlook user working in a corporate office receives 50 emails day, according to our research. Thousands of identical emails are kept in different Microsoft Outlook folders. For instance, we may see that a working professional in a company receives several duplicate emails from the same people in Outlook and it creates various problems for the users to identify the most accurate one.

Most long-time Outlook users discover thousands of duplicate emails in their mailboxes. Additionally, it causes their Outlook PST file to increase or become excessively large, which ultimately results in PST file corruption. So as to make the PST file smaller Therefore, it is advised to remove duplicate emails from the inbox in order to reduce the PST file size.

Why do users need to Remove Duplicate Emails in Outlook

One of the well-known programs included in the Microsoft Suite is Outlook Email Client. Outlook needs lots of resources to ensure seamless performance. Users of Outlook occasionally get duplicate emails and messages. The issues listed below are likely to come up for you at some point.

  • The size of the Outlook data files is unnecessarily increased by duplicate emails. It makes Outlook slower than usual. The productivity of businesses is also harmed and users face a problem when accessing new emails and responding to them takes extra time.
  • Outlook email duplication causes confusion is it is not clear immediately. The user is unable to verify whether an email has received a response. The team members and clients will become even more perplexed if you keep replying to the same email many times.
  • Duplicate items will increase the size of the Exchange/Office 365 mailbox if Outlook is set up with Exchange Server or Office 365.
  • As your Outlook mailbox will be filled with unusual duplicate emails and Outlook backups will consume more space. Then, you will be charged more for additional space if you store backups on any external cloud storage.

Understanding the root cause of the duplicity of Outlook emails is essential before attempting to solve the query “How to remove duplicate emails in Outlook?” Once the reason has been identified, you can remove duplicate emails from Outlook for free by using the right workaround.

Reasons Behind Duplicacy of Emails in Outlook

The following are some possible causes due to which duplicate emails in Outlook occur:

  • Incorrect arrangement of the rules:
  • When you receive an email message, it will be confusing if the rules are configured wrong. The emails end up being duplicated as a result.
  • Messages are sent and received at frequent intervals:
  • The emails and other data in the mailbox won’t be synchronized if the inbox updates more frequently in a short period of time, which will result in email duplication.
  • Account setup error: If you have set up a same email account on several devices at the same time such as Laptop, PC, or mobile device. Then, the incoming message will repeatedly sync. This can be one of the causes of duplicate emails in your Outlook mailbox.
  • Incorrect Mailbox settings: If the mailbox specifications are set incorrectly while creating an account in Outlook, it is probable that the same email and any other message will be received many times.

Technical Faults:

The duplicated Outlook items can potentially be caused to a mail server technical problem. If you choose the “Leave Messages on the Server” option, such occurrences regularly occur. When two or more “transfer a copy to” rules are applied to particular incoming emails. This frequently results in email duplication.

The merger of multiple PST files into a single file can also result in duplicate emails.

Whatever the reason behind the duplicacy of Outlook emails, it will create issues in your work life. So, we will now move to some efficient and effective solutions to solve this issue.

But, before that, you need to identify the duplicate emails through the search option in Outlook. So, let’s find out how to do this.

How can I use Outlook to check for duplicate emails?

A single step cannot reveal the duplicacy of a single Outlook email. If a message displays more than one email, you can check this using a number of its steps. The following basis is available for comparison:

  • Subject
  • Text
  • Sender
  • Recipient
  • Attachment

If you have duplicate emails in your mailbox, you may see identical emails more than once if you do a search using the above-mentioned basis. You can use the aforementioned basis, such as “Subject”, to search the inbox emails for a small number of duplicate emails, and then use the application’s Delete button to remove them. The same task, however, would be challenging if there are multiple emails, so perform the following solutions to do the same.

Methods to Delete Duplicate Emails in Outlook /2019/2016/2013 – Top 3 Ways

It’s crucial to remove duplicate files from your email. If you have hundreds or thousands of such emails, it would be difficult for you. Manually deleting those items would be next to impossible if the Outlook duplicate emails count is even higher. Consequently, removing duplicate items is a difficult task, and regrettably, Microsoft does not offer a simple solution for this issue, not even in Outlook 2013.

Solution 1. Always choose “Do not Import Duplicate Items”

outlook, do not import duplicate items

When importing Outlook items, make a habit to always choose “Do not Import Duplicate Items.”

You must make sure to choose the “Do not Import Duplicate” option at the end of the import process when importing Outlook PST file items like mailbox folders or contacts using the Import/Export feature of the Outlook application to prevent the import of duplicate items in the application.

Solution 2. Decide how frequently the inbox updates

send recieve time interval in Outlook

Step 1. Open & Run Microsoft Outlook.

Step 2. Under the “Send/Receive” menu, select “Send/Receive Groups”.

Step 3. Click the “Define Send/Receive Groups” tab and a new windows will pop-up.

Step 4. Click the group you want to edit in the new window. There is only one group by default, i.e. “All Accounts”. Alternatively, you can also create a new group by using the “New” button.

Step 5. After choosing the group, pick “Edit” from the menu.

Step 6. Select the desired time interval from the drop-down menu under the “Schedule an automated send/receive every __ minutes” option in the next box.

Step 7. Choose the preferred time interval and click “OK” to save the changes.

By following the steps 3 to 7, you can also specify other time intervals for various groupings of accounts.

Solution 3. Run Inbox Clean Up Tool to Delete Duplicate Emails

Remove Duplicate Emails in Outlook inbox cleanup tool Outlook

There are a number of applications and add-ins in MS Outlook that may successfully wipe up duplicate emails from Outlook application. One such built-in tool that aids in deleting duplicate email messages from the Outlook inbox is Clean Up Tool.

Here is how to use Outlook Clean Up Tool to Remove Duplicate Emails

Step 1. Open & Run MS Outlook 2016 on your local system.

Step 2. Choose the Inbox folder which contains the duplicate email messages.

Step 3. Select Clean Up from the menu. Next, based on the occurence of duplicate items, choose any one of the following options:

  • Clean Up Conversation: This removes duplicate email messages from the conversation and moves them to the Deleted Items folder.
  • Clean Up Folder: This option is to remove duplicate email messages from a specific folder.
  • Clean up folders and sub-folders: This will clean both folders and subfolders as well.

Step 4. After that, tap on the Deleted Items folder and choose the Empty folder option to delete the duplicate email messages permanently from Outlook mailbox.

Concluding Words

To see duplicate emails in Microsoft Outlook can be an irritating issue, but there are a few ways to get rid of it. In this article, we’ve listed the best methods to remove duplicate emails in Outlook 2016, 2019, 2021. Follow the solutions precisely to get rid of those annoying duplicate emails. All of these techniques are quite easy to use and simple to understand.