How to Remove Duplicate Emails from Outlook 2016?

Summary: This article discusses the root causes of receiving duplicate emails in Outlook Mailboxes. It also explains the impact of duplicate items as well as how it is removed from MS Outlook 2016 version.

MS Outlook is the backbone for communication among corporate houses, institutions, colleges, and individual users. Hence, its safety and security are of great importance. Statistics show that receiving duplicate emails is an annoying situation as they are enclosed in each folder of the MS Outlook account.

   Reasons behind Receiving Duplicate Emails in MS Outlook

After discussion with many email experts, I have concluded the key reasons such as:

•        Incorrect account setup can cause duplicated emails. If you check the option ‘Leave Message on the server’, then mail server automatically creates multiple copies of same messages repeatedly
•             If your Outlook doesn’t synchronise with other applications or handheld devices, then it will create the possibilities of duplicate emails
•    Sometime, third-party applications such as Antivirus or Firewall can invoke the duplicate emails towards your mailbox. It happens due to wrong setting or clash with MS Outlook

Impact of Duplicate Emails in MS Outlook

• The Outlook performance will slow down. For example, you are searching for a specific email using instant search and it shows as Searching; so, you have to patiently wait for Outlook response and when the findings arrive, the search result shows several duplicate emails.
• Another significant impact is when Outlook reaches its size limit, it slows down the performance of MS Outlook and damages your stored items. 
• Duplicate emails cause confusion and errors, and the result is replying the same mail more than one time.
• Due to the increasing size of Outlook files, Business Professionals need to delete the unnecessary emails to avoid such errors.

Free Steps to Remove Duplicate Emails from Outlook (Outlook 2013 & 2016)

MS Outlook provides the Clean Up tool feature that allows you to remove the duplicate items from Outlook PST file. Follow the steps below:

Firstly, backup all your original emails items to avoid the risk of losing emails.

Step 1: Open MS Outlook 2016

Step 2: Next, select the folder where duplicate emails are stored

Step 3: Go to Home, and then Select Clean Up tool which further drops down to other options.

Step 4: Next select the Clean Up Conversation from the drop down menu to delete and move duplicate emails in the conversation to the deleted items folder.

Step 5: The Clean Up Folder option will allow you to delete the duplicate emails and move to deleted items from the Folders.

Step 6: The Clean Up folder and subfolder will delete the duplicate emails and move to deleted items folder from the subfolder as well

Step 7: Once the Clean Up process is complete, right-click on the Deleted Items folder and then click on Empty Folder to delete your duplicate mail items.

                                 

                   

The Duplicate emails have now been permanently removed from Outlook. You can cross check it for further validation.

Conclusion:

It is essential to fix duplicate email issues as early as possible, whether manually or using a third-party tool. This is also recommended by email experts as a proactive approach to making your email application safe. If you are adept with the manual methods, then you may proceed with it, else a secure and reliable third-party software would serve as a good alternative. 

Reference: 
http://www.stellarinfo.com/blog/remove-duplicated-email-messages-outlook-2016/