Duplicate junk e-mail messages appear in the Junk E-mail folder in Outlook 2003

Monday, November 3, 2008

This problem occurs because Outlook 2003 has the junk e-mail protection level set to Safe Lists Only.

When you create a junk e-mail rule in Outlook 2003 with the junk e-mail protection level set to Safe Lists Only, the restriction structure (SRestriction) causes an Exchange Server that is running without junk e-mail filtering to decide if an e-mail message is junk e-mail or if it is not junk e-mail. Outlook 2003 then processes all the junk e-mail messages on the client side. If there is more than one instance of Outlook 2003 running, multiple copies of the same junk e-mail message can be moved from the Inbox to the Junk Mail folder while duplicates of the junk e-mail messages are created in the Junk E-mail folder.


You receive duplicate e-mail messages in your Junk E-mail folder in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 when all the following conditions are true:
• You have more than one instance of Outlook 2003 running on different computers, and all the instances are configured with the same Microsoft Exchange Server e-mail account.
• The junk e-mail protection level for your e-mail account is set to Safe Lists Only in Outlook 2003.
• Your Exchange Server does not filter incoming e-mail messages.
• All instances of Outlook 2003 use an Exchange Server e-mail account in Cached Exchange Mode.
• The sender of the e-mail message is not in your Safe Senders list in Outlook 2003.
• The sender of the e-mail message is not in your Contacts in Outlook 2003.
• The sender of the e-mail message is not in your Blocked Senders list in Outlook 2003.
• None of the recipients of the e-mail message are in your Trusted Recipients list in Outlook 2003.


RESOLUTION

This problem was first fixed in a hotfix that is now contained in a service pack. If you installed the latest Microsoft Office 2003 service pack, you do not have to install the hotfix.