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shambaladFlag for United States of America

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Prevent Outlook from receiving duplicate messages after reloading computer

My laptop finally got to the point where the best course of action was to start from scratch with a fresh install of the OS and applications. Before I did this, I copied my Outlook.pst file to an external drive. I then reinstalled Windows Vista Premium (64 bit) and Office 2007 Professional.
I copied the pst file back in the local folder, then started up Outlook. Outlook ignored the Outlook.pst file already out there, and created another file Outlook1.pst and started receiving messages into it.
I keep copies of my messages out in my online mailbox. There are currently about 4000 messages out there. To stop Outlook from copying all of the messages into the new file, I pulled the network plug out of my laptop. I then made the older Outlook.pst the default file and deleted the Outlook1.pst file. Now when I started up Outlook again, I had the old messages out there, but when I reconnected to the internet Outlook began receiving all 4000 of the messages from the online mailbox. How can I stop this from happening? I know I can run an app to get rid of the duplicates, but is there a 'right' way to do this so I don't have to go through all of this aggravation?
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agengler11
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Are you using an Exchange Server or is this POP mail?
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ASKER

This is POP mail.
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At least you can receive all mail and delete duplicates after that. There is a simple and free tool:
http://www.outlookfreeware.com/en/products/all/OutlookMessagesRemoveDuplicates/
I know I can do that (it's what I ended up doing). I'm trying to find a way that keeps the original pst file intact.
Another issue with just receiving all thee mail again is that I've done a lot of maintenance work on my internal pst file. That is to say, although my 'online' mail  repository has basically all of the messages I've received for the last few years, I've deleted all the spam and unnecessary mail from my pst file.
As it is,  after I received all of the mail and deleted the duplicates, I had to go through the inbox and delete a couple thousand messages that I didn't want and had already once deleted from same inbox: a major PITA.
My interest in this question is for that next time I have to reload a system, which, sooner or later, will happen. I don't want to have to go through all this again.
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Alexei Kuznetsov
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thims -
That sounds reasonable enough. Because I'm a glutton for punishment, I'm goiing to test your suggestion out by uninstalling Office and reinstalling it again. But it won't be today. I'll give it a shot in a couple of days.
Thanks,
Todd
I don't have the time to reinstall Office right now.
Thanks,
Todd