How can I stop Outlook from duplicating all inbox/sent emails in another folder

Question

Somewhere I accidently changed an e-mail setting and now all incoming and outgoing e-mails are duplicated in a folder I created (lets call it YYarchive). I want to undo the change but can't find what needs to be changed.

I use Outlook365 and GMAIL. Use a desktop dell computer and Windows 10

In GMAIL->ALL Data, the e-mails also have 2 labels eg. inbox YYarchive or sent YYarchive

I was in the process of manually archiving e-mails when I made the inadvertent change. It was a new process for me so I was reviewing & changing a lot of things. I must have inadvertently changed something and I can't find how to undo the change.

I have checked:

1. The File-options-advanced-AutoArchive settings- nothing is checked. Even if it was, the folder name is not YYarchive.
2. File-options-manage rules & alerts - there is nothing
3. The Inbox & Sent mail folders - rt. click -properties - do not archive in this folder is selected.
4. My search of the web did not give me any clues

Is it possible it is something in GMAIL that is duplicating all e-mails in YYarchive

Appreciate any thoughts on where to look next.

Answer 1

Hi @Robin Zacharias , I’m glad to hear that your issue has been resolved! It seems like the problem was likely due to the synchronization settings between Outlook and Gmail. When you renamed the “YYarchive” folder to “ZZarchive” in Outlook, Gmail might not have immediately updated this change, hence the “YYarchive” label was removed and “ZZarchive” was not added. As for the email deletion issue you mentioned, this could be because both Outlook and Gmail use the IMAP protocol, which allows for synchronization of emails across multiple devices. So, when you delete an email from the “Inbox”, it also gets deleted from “YYarchive” because these two folders are essentially different “views” of the same email. If you are still experiencing duplicate emails in your inbox, you can try unsubscribing from the “All Mail” folder in Outlook. To do this, right-click on the folder and choose “IMAP folders,” then select “Unsubscribe All mail”.

Also check Gmail's settings: Log in to Gmail web, go to Settings -> Labels -> and set the labels you don't want to sync with Outlook to not show up in IMAP access.

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Answer 2

Thanks for getting back to me. You are correct when I renamed the folder it was only a temporary fix. Eventually GMAIL-ALL Mail assigned the new label (ZZarchive) to items & consequently ZZarchive had a copy. (There was also a copy in Inbox/Sent) I applied your suggestion to go into GMAIL-settings-Labels and unchecked Show in IMAP. This stopped e-mails from being sent to Outlook ZZarchive. So from an Outlook perspective everything looks normal.

In GMAIL -All Mail e-mails are still being double labeled with Inbox and ZZarchive. However this does not seem to cause any issues so I will just ignore it.

Thanks for your help. I will consider this item as closed.