How to Remove Duplicate Items in Outlook? – Best Solution in 2023!

Ritu Roy | delete duplicates duplicates remover How to's Outlook | 5 minutes read | Modified on: 25-10-2023
how to remove duplicate items in outlook

Summary: Outlook duplicates can mess with your mailbox and make it hard to organize your emails effectively. In order to have a clutter-free inbox in Outlook, our post provides simple instructions on how to remove duplicate items in Outlook. We also suggest that you use the CubexSoft Outlook Duplicate Remover tool to quickly eliminate duplicate contacts, emails, and other objects.

In Microsoft Outlook, duplicate items may clutter your inbox, reduce productivity, and lead to misunderstanding. It might be difficult to keep track of what has been deleted and what has been added, particularly when importing files into Outlook. Even worse, when importing, Outlook’s duplicate detection feature is by default disabled, which causes duplicates to go unnoticed.

However, getting rid of duplicate things is not impossible. Actually, there are several methods for swiftly and effectively removing Outlook duplicate items without the need for advanced technical knowledge. Thus, you will find a detailed tutorial in this post on how to remove duplicate items in Outlook mailbox.

Read this article in its entirety to learn how to delete duplicate items from Microsoft Outlook 2016, 2019, and all prior versions.

How Duplicate Data Items May Become Problematic for you?

Microsoft Outlook is one of the well-known applications included in the Microsoft Suite. Outlook needs a lot of resources in order to function well. Duplicate emails and messages are a regular problem for Outlook users. It’s likely that you will encounter the issues listed below at some point.

Confusing emails are sent in duplicate. The user is unable to verify whether or not an email was answered. Your repeated responses to the same email will only cause more misunderstandings between clients and team members.

Outlook data files become larger unnecessarily when there are duplicate emails. The Outlook application starts to lag. The productivity of businesses is adversely affected. Getting to new emails and responding to them takes longer.

Duplicate items will cause the Exchange/Office 365 mailbox to grow if Outlook is set up with Exchange Server or Office 365.

It will require more capacity to store Outlook backups, and you will have to pay more for additional space if you store backups on any external cloud storage.

What It Is the Reasons for Removing Duplicate Outlook Items?

Removing duplicate Outlook items, such as emails, contacts, or calendar entries, is essential for several reasons:

  • Organizational Efficiency: Duplicate items clutter your mailbox and make it challenging to find essential information. This can lead to confusion and wasted time sifting through redundant items.
  • Storage Space: Duplicate items consume unnecessary storage space in your mailbox or on your email server. This can increase costs and slow down email access and performance.
  • Data Integrity: Duplicate items can lead to data inconsistencies, especially in a business context. It may cause discrepancies in contact information, appointment scheduling, or email communication.
  • Backup Size: Duplicates can inflate the size of email backups and archives, leading to higher storage costs and slower data restoration.
  • Data Privacy and Security: Duplicate items can increase the risk of accidentally sharing sensitive information with the wrong contacts, which can have significant privacy and security implications.

How to detect the duplicity of emails in Outlook?

You cannot find the duplicity of a single Outlook email in a single glance. To see if a message displays more than one email, you can use a number of its characteristics. For the comparison, you can utilize the following fields:

  • Subject
  • Text
  • Sender
  • Recipient
  • Attachment

If you have duplicate emails in your mailbox, you may see several instances of the same emails when you perform a search using these criteria. If there are only a few duplicate emails, you can use the application’s Delete option to remove the comparable emails from your inbox by searching for them using one of the aforementioned fields (like “Subject”). However, this might become a challenging task if there are a lot of duplicate products.

Techniques to Delete Duplicate Items in Microsoft Outlook

To get rid of duplicate items in Microsoft Outlook, there are various methods. It comes with both a professional tool and a manual for removing duplicate emails from Microsoft Outlook folders. So, correctly execute the following steps:

#1: To manage duplicate emails, make sure, only one instance is running.

  1. To launch Task Manager, right-click on the taskbar.
  2. Select the tab for processes.
  3. On the Image Name column, click. All processes are now arranged alphabetically. There ought to be just one Outlook.exe shown. Should there are multiple, you might receive multiple emails.
  4. To end a task, right-click on the Outlook.exe listings and select End Task.
  5. In the confirmation dialogue, select Yes.

#2: Do not Store Message Copies on the Server

  1. Launch Microsoft Outlook.
  2. After selecting “Tools,” select “Email Accounts.”
  3. After choosing “View or Modify Current Email Accounts,” press the “Next” button.
  4. Click “Change” after choosing your email account from the list.
  5. After selecting the “More Settings” button, select the “Advanced” tab.
  6. Lastly, click the checkbox next to “Leave a copy of messages on the server” to remove it.
  7. Press the “OK” button.

#3: Create Two POP3 Account Profiles to Eliminate Duplicate Items

  1. Launch Microsoft Outlook.
  2. Get the “Tools” menu open.
  3. Select “Define Send/Receive Groups” and “Send/Receive Settings.”
  4. To view the accounts, double-click the group.
  5. After selecting one of the two accounts, uncheck the box next to “Receive mail items.”

#4: Eliminate Duplicate Emails with Antivirus Software

Antivirus software is another tool you can use to prevent MS Outlook duplicates. The email protection can be turned off in the settings. However, if a virus infects your computer through email, turning off your antivirus program could lead to serious problems, so we do not advise taking this approach.

Note: Although these techniques may not always be the best options, users may still experience issues with viewing multiple items in Microsoft Outlook. For MS Outlook, we recommend using a third-party program to get rid of duplicate Outlook entries.

Using Professional Solutions to Remove Duplicate Items in Outlook

With the help of CubexSoft PST Duplicate Remover, you can rid your Outlook PST files of any duplicate contacts, emails, calendar events, tasks, journals, and other objects. For eliminating duplicate emails without worrying about data loss, the program is trustworthy and safe. You can purchase this tool after using the trial version, which is also accessible on the internet.

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Follow Step By Step Process to Remove Duplicates in Outlook

  1. Initially, you must download, install, and run the software on your computer.
  2. Now that you have made sure all the requirements are met, add the file containing the duplicate Outlook items by clicking the Select Files/Folder button.
  3. Next, choose items from the Categories menu. You must select the Across Folder(s) or Within Folder(s) option in the Duplicate Option (s) depending on your needs.
  4. Click the Browse button and select the destination place to save the generated file.
  5. Lastly, to start the process of eliminating duplicate events all duplicate entries will be removed from Outlook after the process is finished.

The Bottom Line!

We successfully covered free methods for removing duplicate items from Microsoft Outlook in this blog post. To get rid of duplicates in Microsoft Outlook, carefully follow the preceding instructions. You can select the manual method or the professional Outlook Email Duplicate Remover program that yields the best results from our suggestions.