Users are reporting duplicate copies of messages in their sent folder:
Our accounts consistently get double messages in the sent folder. The recipient only receives one copy, but there are always two in the sent message folder.
The cause of this phenomenon depends on the type of email account involved.
In the case of IMAP accounts, Outlook saves a sent message in the IMAP account's Sent message folder and your IMAP mail provider may also save a copy. The result is two messages in the Sent Items folder every time you send a message. This seems to be most common with Gmail accounts but other IMAP accounts may be affected as well.
Change the IMAP Account's Sent Options
If you are using Outlook 2016/2019 and have the Simplified account setup dialogs, you'll need to check the Advanced settings from Manage Profiles. This is the control Panel > Mail dialog, but you can open it right from Outlook: Go to File > Account Settings > Manage Profiles. Click the Email accounts button, double click on your account then click More settings.
In Outlook 2013, to check your settings for saving Sent items, open File, Account Settings. Double click on your IMAP account then click More Settings. In Outlook 2013 and 2016, look on the Advanced tab.
In Outlook 2010, check the options on the Sent Items tab.
Choose the option for Do not save copies of sent items and send a test message to see if the problem persists.
Note: this setting will not remove existing duplicated sent messages. It will prevent duplicates from being created going forward.
Change Outlook's Global Options
If you have only one email account in your profile, you could use the option to not save sent messages. This is in File, Options, Mail, in the "Save messages" section, uncheck the option to Save copies of messages in the Sent folder.
Note that this setting will apply to all accounts - if you have more than one email account configured, you will not save sent items for any account.
For this reason, you need to be careful using the global setting in File, Options as not all mail servers will save a sent item for you when sending. It's better to disable the option to save sent items on the More Settings, Sent folder tab.
Scanning outgoing mail with an antivirus scanner may result in duplicates.
Sorry to keep posting here, but now I noticed that when I sent an email with attachments, all of the attachments were also sent twice.
If the message was sent twice, i would expect the attachments ot go twice too - but not doubled attachments on one message.
Actually, I just heard from an email recipient that all of my emails are also actually being sent twice,so this seems like a bigger problem.
I am confused about the fix. I want to save a copy of my sent message. I just don't want to have two copies of the sent message. It seems to me that following the instructions will result in not having any copies of the sent messages. Please let me know if I am missing something. Thanks for any help and guidance!
Does your imap server save a copy of sent messages? If so, you don't want outlook to save a copy.
Try disabling the save sent option and send a few test messages. Is a copy saved in the sent folder on the server?
Do recipients still get two copies of the message?
On the duplicate messages - what do you use for antivirus? A 3rd party antivirus that scans outgoing mail can cause duplicates, especially on messages with attachments as it takes longer to scan the messages.
Thank you! My Outlook 365 (subscription) had been doing this for a long time and I finally decided to conduct some research on it. This article was the first in the Google search results and it worked perfectly!
Hi, will you be able to help me outlook for mac version 16.6 ......
Thanks for this. This was very helpful. Please send me a message.
Thanks for help. great job
I don't know where you got your information but when I followed your prompts it lead me nowhere. I have Outlook 2016. I am getting duplicate emails in my sent folder. After your suggestion didn't help I fished around on my own and found this to work. While in Outlook go to FILE then OPTIONS then MAIL then scroll about half way down and under SAVE MESSAGES untick SAVE COPIES OF MESSAGES IN SENT ITEMS FOLDER.
That option turns off saving sent mail for all accounts. If you only have one email account, its not a problem, but can be a problem if you use multiple accounts and only one has a problem.
The first solution in my article is for IMAP accounts - duplicate sent messages is a known issue with Gmail accounts, so Microsoft added the option to not save sent items to the account properties page.
I have Outlook 2016, but for settings it doe not give the detailed Internet email settings any longer - basically just email and password and it self configures. I have several accounts in Outlook - 3 exchange and 3 IMAP, any other suggestions?
That is the new simplified dialog.
You can get into advanced settings from File > Account Settings > Manage Profiles - click on Email button then your account name hen more Settings.
Sometimes the Advanced tab is in Send & Receive settings - Ctrl+Alt+S - click Edit, select the account then Account Properties. (It comes and depending on the build.)