Avoid multiple entries

[mrwul]

Feature Request:

When moving Outlook items from one Outlook-archive to another archive ("archive pst-files"), I may run the chance of
having double entries in one and the same archive.

It would be great if X1 wud -optionally- overwrite existing messages instead of adding them (so duplicates are being listed)

Thanks
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[Kenward]

Not sure that I follow this.

X1 is supposed to reflect what happens in each PST. If you move a message from one to another, that should show up in X1. If this means that you end up with two copies, then X1 shows that too.

But, and this maybe what you are referring to, X1 can take time to catch up with these changes.

[Chris Wheaton]

It seems this is a common comment from our users, sometimes reported to us as "duplicate entries" but are we really looking at "double-entries" or is X1, as Kenward has suggested, simply doing its job.

Consider:

If you have two archives PST1 and PST2 and by whatever means you have a copy of the same email item in both PSTs - the subject of this item is "duplicate entries" for example.

You have set X1 to index both of these PSTs. You then perform a search in your email for the word Duplicate.

The search results will display both of these email items; once from PST1 and once from PST2.

In this situation we would not consider this to be an invalid "duplicate results" situation. True, there are multiple entries for the same email, but as the results are being pulled from two unique repositories of information; the search results are correct.

This is one reason I recommend that our users add the Profile/Pst column to their email oriented searches (Email, Inbox, Sent). Adding this column tells you where - in which profile/pst - an item was found.

[mrwul]

Thanks for the feedback sofar. Another scenario is the following (actually the one I am encountering)

ArchivePST1 with subfolders.

As ArchivePST1 is close to getting its recommended max. size of 2GB (beyond that size its going to get tricky and mails might get lost),
I decide to create a new PST, say ArchivePST2.

In ArchivePST1 I copy (not move!) posts to respective, new,subfolders in ArchivePST2.
There is a reason why I want to copy (and not move) posts from pst1 to pst2 (long story)

So X1 display same posts in both pst files.
No problem sofar.
Any new posts are archived in PST2.

At one point in time (maybe a few months later) I still want to move the posts from pst1 to pst2.

When I do a move now, there will be duplicates in pst2.

The easiest way is to do the move command instead of trying to figure out which posts are
already in pst2 and which one should be moved. Figure out by means of date filters, or whatever.

The idea popped up to allow X1 to overwrite existing posts when moving.

Can't judge if it is technically too complicated, but I guess it does not make sense to have two
identical mail items (no matter how they got there, even after a strange behaviour like above).
I know that Outlook itself has no means to avoid duplicates in its normal mailboxes and one needs
3rd party software to get rid of it.

As X1 is indexing the all and everything, why not have something 'built in' to
- avoid duplicates
- remove duplicates

I think it would be a great improvement to this already outstanding software!

Thanks again.
-

[Chris Wheaton]

I do understand now how you might actually end up with duplicate copies of the same item in the same repository.

While I cannot commit to any such advancement being added into X1; I will take your feature request into consideration and pass it to engineering for consideration.

Let me ask you a question however. Lets take a hypothetical situation where there are 4 copies with 4 unique dates, what is the logic you believe X1 should use to determine which of the 4 is the duplicate it should remove?

It would not be appropriate for X1 to simply message a user with "I've found 4 copies of item A; which do you want to delete?" I would expect that would annoy our clients causing upsets; so this feature would have to run automatically and as a result; in order to code it; we'd have to have some idea from a usability perspective what it was you envisioned and again; what criteria would X1 use to make the decision what item in a list of duplicates to keep.

Any thoughts?

[Kenward]

You have two copies of an email message in two places in your email databases.

X1 finds them.

What's the problem?

I use X1 to help me to track down duplicate copies of PDF files. I sort on the name. Then I can delete unwanted copies. I also use the "Size" and date columns to help me to refine my searches.

The last thing I want is for X1 to hide any duplicated files.

In the case of duplicated emails, X1 helps me to find and removed unwanted copies.

[mrwul]

I do understand now how you might actually end up with duplicate copies of the same item in the same repository.

While I cannot commit to any such advancement being added into X1; I will take your feature request into consideration and pass it to engineering for consideration.

Let me ask you a question however. Lets take a hypothetical situation where there are 4 copies with 4 unique dates, what is the logic you believe X1 should use to determine which of the 4 is the duplicate it should remove?

It would not be appropriate for X1 to simply message a user with "I've found 4 copies of item A; which do you want to delete?" I would expect that would annoy our clients causing upsets; so this feature would have to run automatically and as a result; in order to code it; we'd have to have some idea from a usability perspective what it was you envisioned and again; what criteria would X1 use to make the decision what item in a list of duplicates to keep.

Any thoughts?

Right now my(..) situation is that I have copied many but selected mails to a different pst which I've put on a server to be viewed/used by others.
This was a temporary action at the time. Now I want to move (..) over most of the rest to that 'new' pst.
Whilst doing so, X1 shd then ask whether it should overwrite existing items.
Mind.. This ionly when X1 encounters dups in the same destination folder.
I would click on Yes then.

In case a user wud select 'No' in this scenario, he/she will end up with dups in the same destination folder and -frankly- I am not sure
duplicates in the same destination folder are really useful.

That aside, there may be instances where dups are alright, but not in the same folder.

e.g.
I have a message that concerns to two different topics:
I copy the message to subfolder abc (which is about this topic a)
I move the message to subfolder xyz (which is about topic b)
These may be considered as 'rightful' dups, so to say.

Considering the above (X1 warning/same folder), I guess it will actually be difficult to get dups.

Getting back to your question: what about multiple dups?
a) as long as they are different folders, I guess they are there 'on purpose' and should not be touched
b) if they are in the same folder, I would suggest to have an option that dups are automatically deleted.
or, alternatively, dups are moved to a subfolder e.g. \X1DeletedDups (instead of being deleted), so
the user can still decide what to do with them. Often duplicate file finders have an option like that.

As said, it is a suggestion only.

Am not sure it this all is technically possible. Maybe by means of a plug-in?

Anyway, thanks for at least giving giving some thought to this idea ...

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[mrwul]

You have two copies of an email message in two places in your email databases.

X1 finds them.

What's the problem?

I use X1 to help me to track down duplicate copies of PDF files. I sort on the name. Then I can delete unwanted copies. I also use the "Size" and date columns to help me to refine my searches.

The last thing I want is for X1 to hide any duplicated files.

In the case of duplicated emails, X1 helps me to find and removed unwanted copies.

The idea is to avoid having hundreds of duplicate mails in the same folder on spending much time figuring out
a. what mails are in fact indeed duplicates, and
b. avoid that too many mails (which were assumed to be duplicates) are accidentally deleted.

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[Chris Wheaton]

Mrwul - thank you for the clarification.

In reading your idea I was left with the question "why isn't this simply taken care of by Outlook when you move the data"??

Even if you use X1 to perform the move all X1 is truly doing is passing your instructions - "I desire to move/copy these items from here to there - to Outlook, the actual transaction of the move/copy is completed by Outlook directly. Seems like Microsoft could improve Outlook?

In any event; I appreciate your input with regard to adding services within X1 that might make up for Outlook limitations and in turn have the potential to make X1 a better product. Thank you.

[TonyG]

The double-entry problem has been bugging me since this summer--it wasn't there before, and I've been using X1 since the beginning of time. Actually, there are two perhaps unrelated problems I've been dealing with: i) double-entry: I move each received and sent e-mail into In and Out subfolders in annual PST files. I drag them from Inbox, not copy, to a PST subfolder, after which it's not visible in the Inbox anymore, but after indexing in X1 I always see double entries listing both Outlook and the PST subfolder as the locations. Why Outlook if I do not index the server? ii) I cannot find my Sent e-mails when searching with X1, even though they are present and readable in their annual Out subfolders. I've been looking for various options etc, but to no avail. I'd appreciate any suggestions on how to fix these two basic problems...

[Kenward]

I am not sure that I follow what is going on at your end, so this may be all rubbish.

There are usually two reasons for seeing double entries. One is that things have been moved and the index needs to clear up after it, which can take time.

The other reason is that there are two copies of something on your system.

If the latter, then you can check what is going on, and eliminate the duplicates, by adding columns to your search that show the locations of the two entries. For example, adding the Profile/PST column may show that you are also indexing a database somewhere else. Then you can simply filter that out of your searches.

[Chris Wheaton]

I generally recommend you add two columns to your email search.

Open X1. Go to Tools > Columns. In the list of selected columns on the right you do not currently have:

Path
Profiles/PSTs

You'll want to select these from the available columns on the left and add them to the selected columns on the right. (click the appropriate arrow to add them).

Perform your searches again. This should reveal the profile and path where each specific result is located.

If the "duplicate" result is found in two unique locations this is not what I would consider a duplicate result. What you have there is that you've told X1 to index and find results in "bucket A" and also in "bucket B". The fact that the same item is in both buckets and X1 displays this is normal.

[itaccounts]

Hi Support,

When will the below feature implemented in the X1 application?

Feature Request:

When moving Outlook items from one Outlook-archive to another archive ("archive pst-files"), I may run the chance of
having double entries in one and the same archive.

It would be great if X1 wud -optionally- overwrite existing messages instead of adding them (so duplicates are being listed)

Thanks
=

[ell_x1search]

Hi,
I echo the most recent message on the thread as I, too, regularly archive items (mailbox size restrictions) and consequently end up with duplicates of everything that is archived (since it was first indexed directly from the inbox and then the archive).

If detecting duplicates is not possible, how about either :
1) detecting a deletion from the inbox and updating the index accordingly
2) automatically reindex the whole inbox, ideally overnight via a scheduled task

Is either of these two workarounds possible?

thanks.