Is your Outlook mailbox clogged up with duplicate emails and conversations? Here, we will discuss different methods to remove duplicates in Outlook on your Windows PC.
Duplicate emails can cause a reduction in your productivity, an increase in search time for emails and messages, and a slowdown in Outlook’s overall performance. It also cuts off free storage space in your mailbox. Also, it results in a large size of the Outlook Data file that leads to corrupting the file. Hence, it becomes crucial to find duplicates and clear them from your Outlook account.
How do I mass delete duplicate emails in Outlook?
Outlook’s built-in Delete feature lets you clean up duplicates from selected folders and conversations. It provides Clean Up Conversations, Clean Up Folder, and Clean Up Folder and Sub-folders options to access from the Home tab to mass delete duplicates in Outlook. In this post, we are going to show you more methods using which you can clear Outlook duplicates. So, let us check out now.
How to delete Duplicate Emails in Outlook?
Here are the different methods using which you can delete or clear duplicate emails on Outlook:
- Set up Outlook Rules correctly configured.
- Use Outlook’s Clean Up Folder feature.
- Select the Do not import duplicates option while importing Outlook items.
- Manually find and delete Outlook duplicates.
- Use a third-party Outlook duplicate remover tool.
1] Set up Outlook Rules correctly configured
If you have applied distinct Outlook rules to the same message, the emails will likely be copied to different folders. This will create duplicate emails. Hence, if the scenario is applicable, review the created rules and make sure they are configured correctly.
2] Use Outlook’s Clean Up Folder feature
Outlook provides a dedicated Clean-up feature using which you can check for duplicate messages in a folder and clear up redundant conversations. So, you can use it to delete duplicate emails in Outlook. Here are the steps to do so:
First, open your Outlook app and go to the Home tab. Make sure you have selected the target folder from where you want to remove all the duplicate emails.
Now, press the Delete drop-down button and then select the Clean Up Folder option.
After that, you will get a confirmation prompt; simply press the Clean Up Folder button in this prompt. It will then clean up the selected folder on your Outlook by deleting duplicates.
Note: If you want to configure some settings before cleaning up a folder, you can do that too. This will make sure that you don’t get rid of important messages. Here’s how you can do that:
First, go to the File menu in Outlook and choose Options.
In the Outlook Options window, go to the Mail tab from the left-side pane.
Now, locate the Conversation Clean Up section and set up the following options accordingly:
- Select the cleaned-up items folder.
- Enable or disable options like Don’t move unread messages, Don’t move categorized messages, Don’t move flagged messages, Don’t move digitally signed messages, “When a reply modifies a message, don’t move the original”, etc.
Read: Free Duplicate File Finder and Remover software for Windows.
3] Select the Do not import duplicates option while importing Outlook items
When you import Outlook data files (PST) to MS Outlook, it prompts you with some options like Replicate duplicates with items imported, Allow duplicates to be created, and Do not import duplicates. Make sure you have selected the Do not import duplicates option and then import the data file.
See: Cannot expand the folder; Not enough free memory – Outlook error.
4] Manually find and delete Outlook duplicates
There is also a way to find duplicate emails in Outlook manually and then delete them. Here is the step-by-step procedure to do that:
First, open the Outlook app and go to the View tab.
From here, click on the Change View drop-down option and choose the Preview mode.
You can now click on the Size column and compare the emails with the same size. If you find duplicate emails, select the older version of the email and press the Delete button.
You can also use the below steps to delete duplicates in Outlook manually:
First, go to the Home tab and click on the Current View > View Settings option.
In the opened window, click on the Sort button and then set up the sort parameters as shown in the above screenshot. And then press the OK button.
Next, press the OK in the “Advanced View Settings” window.
The emails will now be sorted as per specified parameters. You can compare, find, and remove the duplicates from the results.
However, this method can be tiresome if there are many duplicates in your mailbox. But you can consider if you want to compare specific emails having the same subject, size, and other details.
See: How to remove METERED NETWORK WARNING in Outlook?
5] Use a third-party Outlook duplicate remover tool
If you don’t want to do all the work manually or you like using a tool that does the work automatically, you can use a third-party add-in or tool to remove duplicates in Outlook. There are some free add-ins and software that lets you delete Outlook duplicates without any hassle.
Removes Duplicate Messages by OutlookFreeware.com is a nice utility to clear duplicates from your Outlook mailbox. It provides both advanced and free versions. The free version has limited functionalities and can be used for non-commercial use only. Now, let us check out how to use it.
How to delete duplicates in Outlook using a third-party add-in?
First of all, download the free version of Removes Duplicate Messages from from here. Scroll down to the end of the page and get the free edition.
Once downloaded, run the setup file to install this utility. It can be used as a standalone application as well as Outlook add-in. While installing the software, make sure to tick the Enable Add-in for Microsoft Outlook box.
When the installation is done, open the Outlook app and you will see a new tab named OutlookFreeware.com Move to this tab.
Now, click on the Remove Duplicate Messages button.
It will now as you to configure and select the Outlook profile and folders from where you want to remove duplicates. So, click on the Configure button and then select the target Outlook profile. After that, choose the folders from where you want to delete the duplicates.
Once done, press the OK button and then hit the Run button to run the add-in and clear Outlook duplicate emails.
If there are duplicates in the selected folders, it will clear them. Otherwise, it will return a “No duplicates found” message.
If you want to run the standalone app, open the OutlookFreeware.com Utilities app using the Windows Search function. After that, click on the Configure button and select the Outlook profile that you want to clear. Then, choose the folders and run the app to remove duplicates.
So, this is how you can delete duplicate emails in Outlook using built-in features and third-party apps to keep your mailbox clean and tidy.
I hope this helps!
What is the best duplicate email remover for Outlook?
There are several duplicate email remover tools for Outlook. To name some, Kernel for Outlook Duplicates Remover, SysInfo Outlook Duplicate Remover, and MS Outlook Help Outlook Duplicate Remover are some good ones that you can use to clear duplicates in Outlook. However, these are paid software. If you are looking for a free Outlook duplicate remover, you can try the free edition of Removes Duplicate Messages from OutlookFreeware.com.
Now read: How to delete all emails before or after a date in Outlook?
