Top 4 Ways to Remove Duplicate Emails in Outlook 2019/2016

What causes duplicate emails in Outlook?

Many users are confronted with the error of double emails in Outlook. Some users even receive multiple copies of the same email. How does this happen? Here are several possible reasons:

• Incorrect configuration of rules.
• Low frequency of the inbox updates.
• Synchronizing Outlook email on multiple devices.
• Having multiple folders set up for storing your messages.
• Importing PST file to current Outlook profile.

How to remove duplicate emails in Outlook 2019/2016/2013

To have Outlook remove duplicate emails, there are four methods for your reference:

👉 Method 1: Configure the rules correctly
👉 Method 2: Set the inbox updates frequency
👉 Method 3: Clean up the inbox
👉 Method 4: Use professional Outlook duplicate items remover

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To avoid any data loss during deleting duplicate emails in Outlook, it is suggested to backup Outlook emails beforehand.

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Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7

Method 1: Configure the rules correctly

Follow the steps below to check your current Outlook rules and change the rules if they are not correct.

1. In Outlook, select File > Manage Rules & Alerts to open the Rules and Alerts dialog box.
2. On the Email Rules tab, you’ll see any rules you have. Select one rule and you can see its description under the rule list. Click an underline value to edit as necessary.

Method 2: Set the inbox updates frequency

If you set short intervals in sending and receiving messages, the emails and other data in the mailbox will not get synchronized, leading to duplication of data. Use these steps to change the inbox updates frequency.

1. Open Outlook. Click the Send/Receive tab > Send/Receive Groups > Define Send/Receive Groups.
2. 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.
3. You can see settings for group “All Accounts” below. The option “Schedule an automatic send/receive every ___ minutes” is checked by default. Change the minutes value to your desired one.

Note: Setting this value to less than 5 min might lead to duplicated entries in your inbox.

4. Click Close to exit.

Method 3: Clean up the inbox

Outlook has a number of utilities and add-ins, which can help you to clean up the duplicate emails easily. Follow the instructions below to clean up your mailbox.

1. Start Outlook and select a mailbox folder.
2. Click Home > Clean Up and choose one of the below options:

• Clean Up Conversation: delete the duplicate emails that are in the conversation.
• Clean Up Folder: remove the duplicate emails from any particular folder.
• Clean Up Folder & Subfolders: remove all redundant messages in the current folder and its subfolders.

3. All the removed emails are sent to the Deleted Items. Right-click the Deleted Items folder and click Empty Folder to permanently delete the emails.

Method 4: Use professional Outlook duplicate items remover

It’s also a good choice to turn to a reliable third-party Outlook duplicate remover tool for permanently removing the Outlook duplicates. Kernel for Outlook Duplicates Remover is such a tool. Learn how to use it below.

1. Download, install and launch the Kernel for Outlook Duplicates application. Click on the Add Task button to add or create a new task.
2. In the Task Creation Wizard, type Task Name and Task Description and click Next to proceed.
3. Select folder(s) for searching duplicate items. You can prioritize the folders to search for duplicate items with the Up and Down buttons and then click Next.

4. Choose the type of operation that you want to perform on the duplicate items and follow the wizard to finish the removing process.

Bonus tip: backup Outlook emails before deletion

To avoid any data loss during deleting duplicate emails in Outlook, it is suggested to backup Outlook emails beforehand. The best Outlook backup software - AOMEI Backupper Professional can give you a hand.

• It enables you to backup all data in Outlook, such as emails, contacts, notes, calendars, and tasks.
• You can choose different devices as the backup location. For example, you can backup to a local disk, external hard drive, USB flash drive, and NAS device, etc.
• You are allowed to backup your email data automatically using the Schedule Backup feature.
• It runs well on all Windows PC systems including Windows 11, 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista and XP.

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After you add the email account you want to backup to the Outlook client, you can run AOMEI Backupper, click Backup and select Outlook Backup to create a backup task for Outlook data.

To sum up

If you are confronted with the error of duplicate emails in Outlook, you can try the four methods described above to remove duplicate items. To avoid data loss during the operations, you’d better backup Outlook emails with AOMEI Backupper in advance. AOMEI Backupper offers you full solutions to backup Outlook data. Besides, it is professional disk cloning software that enables you to transfer data when performing HP Pavilion 15 Notebook PC SSD upgrade. Don’t hesitate to try it out!