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Outlook 2002 downloading multiple copies of certain emails

I am using Outlook 2002, part of Office XP Pro, set to leave mesages on the server.

There are certain emails (generated by CGI script from a website I am managing) which Outlook continues to download multiple copies of every time I go to send/receive. This does not happen to all emails. If I send an email to myself at this account, Outlook will only download once, but the generated messages continue to download again and again. I suspect there is some subtle problem with the Internet message header on the generated message, but I don't know what that problem would be. Here is the header from the "bad" email:

Return-Path: <Merenderos@breeze.he.net>
Received: from breeze.he.net ([127.0.0.9]) by merenderos.org for <pa@merenderos.org>; Wed, 13 Oct 2004 23:36:45 -0700
Message-Id: <1097735805.29978@breeze.he.net>
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 23:36:45 -0700
From: Merenderos Foundation
To: pa@merenderos.org
Subject: New Referral Request added to referrallog.txt
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

and here is one from a typical "good" email, that downloads only once:

Return-Path: <qna@experts-exchange.com>
Received: from cron.experts-exchange.com ([64.156.132.246]) by akemann.us for <peter@akemann.us>; Thu, 14 Oct 2004 01:04:35 -0700
Received: from cron.experts-exchange.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])
by cron.experts-exchange.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id CFDD924808F
for <peter@akemann.us>; Thu, 14 Oct 2004 00:35:58 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <19854374.1097739358850.JavaMail.root@cron.experts-exchange.com>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 00:35:58 -0700 (PDT)
From: Experts Exchange <qna@experts-exchange.com>
To: akemann <peter@akemann.us>
Subject: Experts Exchange - Please Verify Your Email Address
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Experts Exchange

Any insights on this matter would be appreciated.

Thanks,
-Peter

akemann

ASKER

OK, well there wasn't much response on this ( I don't know if I posted it properly ), but I've been working on the problem and believe I have figured it out (sort of):

The script I was using to generate the email looked like this:

$to = "my_email\@my_domain.org";
if (open(MAIL, "|/usr/sbin/sendmail -t $to"))
{
print MAIL <<EOF2;
From: Merenderos Foundation \<contributions\@merenderos.org\>
To: $to
Subject: New Referral Request added to referrallog.txt
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii"
EOF2
&results_screen(MAIL,0);
close(MAIL);
}

where the subrouting "results_screen" generated the HTML content of the body of the message. I removed the line "To:" from the script, since it seemed redundand given that I was opening sendmail with -4 $to, and the problem went away. The email header now looks like:

Return-Path: <contributions@merenderos.org>
Received: from merenderos.org ([65.19.170.52]) by akemann.us for <peter@akemann.us>; Thu, 14 Oct 2004 17:46:44 -0700
Received: from breeze.he.net ([127.0.0.9]) by merenderos.org for <peter@akemann.us>; Thu, 14 Oct 2004 17:46:42 -0700
Message-Id: <1097801202.25241@breeze.he.net>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 17:46:42 -0700
From: Merenderos Foundation <contributions@merenderos.org>
Subject: Thank you for your contribution!
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii"

notice that the "To:" field is gone, but the email still arrives properly.

I wouldn't call it exactly "understanding" the problem, but at least it's solved for now. Hope this is useful to someone.

Also, if anyone understands more thoroughly what was really going on, I would still appreciate a real explanation.

Thanks,
-Peter

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