Remove Duplicate Messages

Remove Duplicate Messages 1.3.9 worked well, but only when I had true duplicates. Unfortunately the multiple copies of drafts that Gmail creates while composing a message are distinct copies and not true duplicates. I no longer save drafts on the Gmail server, but instead locally on my Mac, which has fixed the problem going forward. And I removed the duplicates by creating a Smart Folder in Mail which selected all messages that 1) were from me but 2) not in the Sent Folder and then deleting them. That worked well! Thanks!

Seems promising but unfortunately the download link is dead...
Can someone share the latest version (1.3.6) with me ?
I would appreciate a lot !


TIA

Works exact, but is rather slow as it has to communicate with Mail a lot. It looks up 1000 mails per minute and removes about 50 per minute.

Hello Jolly,

I've been using your mail script for years now with great success. I've just gone to do another cleanup of duplicates (El Capitain, iCloud account) and while it finds and removes duplicates, they just download again as soon as the script finishes running (so they end up again in the inbox and I can see the ones the script removed in the trash).

Is this expected? I'm using 1.3.5.

Thanks, Tony.

With 1.3.0 and OS X 10.10.5, I get a few errors at the hash initialization step: - "Where is ASObjC Runner.app?" pop-up from Script Editor - "2015-08-27 18:25:51.865 defaults[5049:60610] The domain/default pair of (/Users/[username]/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail, _AlwaysShowDuplicates) does not exist" error pop-up I'm not sure how to proceed from there though. The terminal window never moves on from the first pop-up even if you cancel it. Hopefully mine is a unique case. I'm not sure what's different about my set up though.

Unfortunately, this script does not work properly for me. It finds duplicate messages OK, but it does not also remove those duplicate messages from the selected Apple Mail folder, which makes the script useless.

Case in point: I ran the Remove Duplicates script on a folder which contains 3,301 messages. The script found 201 duplicates, and it removed them to the archive folder. I sent those duplicates to the trash. I rebuilt the source mailbox. The source mailbox again had 3,301 messages.

So, I ran the script again on the same source folder. It again found 201 duplicates, and it removed them. The number of messages did not decrement, as I would have expected it to do. I still have the same number of messages in the source folder as when I started.

I ran the script a third time. This time, I selected the option to review each duplicated message before choosing to leave it in the source folder or send it to the archive folder. It again found those same 201 duplicate messages; I again sent all of the duplicate messages to the archive folder; the script again failed to remove those duplicate messages from the source folder in Apple Mail.

I reported this to the developer, but he did not reply.

My low rating is based on the fact that the script does not perform as intended. It finds duplicates, but it does not remove them.

Whether this is a failure of the script or a bug in Apple Mail is a moot issue. A previous Apple Script, developed by Andreas Amann, worked brilliantly before Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) was developed. But, on his website and through correspondence with him, he points out that Apple introduced a bug in Apple Mail which prevents an Apple Script from running correctly in Apple Mail. He filed bug reports with Apple, but those bugs have not been fixed. Accordingly, he had to abandon further development of his very useful scripts. If you try to run his script on Mavericks, for instance, you will encounter an error that prevents it from getting started. While Jolly Roger's script can get started and it can apparently find duplicate messages, my tests inform me that it can not successfully finish the job of removing those messages, which renders it ineffective.

I'm grateful that someone took the time to create such a useful script. Duplicate emails can accumulate from time to time, whether through faulty software (MailHub for instance) or numerous migrations over the years. A couple of issues about the current version: 1) For Yosemite, the "show duplicates" property has changed from "defaults write com.apple.mail AlwaysShowDuplicates -bool true" to "defaults write com.apple.mail _AlwaysShowDuplicates -bool true". Very subtle difference 2) The script times out after about 8,000 messages in my case. I'll leave it for a day and see that no progress has been made, but if I cancel and restart the script, it'll advance by 500 messages (i.e. makes it to 8,500) before hanging again. I suspect the disabling of "include when getting new mail" property is not working as it should, but I checked the AppleScript library and the statement looks fine so I'm not sure. Perhaps a brute force *detect time-out* + *cancel and restart script* is possible if the root cause can't be found. Thanks again for your efforts!

Hey Jolly, Great script. I'm using 1.2.2 on an SSD i7 but find that it slows down from processing about 10 messages a second to about 2 a second after about 3000-4000 messages processed. Is this just applescript or is something not right with 1.2.2? Tony

I'd love to try this Client but its a .scptd file and I am unfamiliar with those.

It doesn't seem to let you decide what to remove. I'd rather have that Option than letting a Script make that decision.

It seems that while the program may support 10.6.8, MacUpdate no longer does. If I attempt to download it, I get a new window that says "Leave MacUpdate and download..." However, that doesn't work on 10.6.8. So, when you try to go to the site, you discover it is named "Jolly Roger" and is showing the skull and bones of a pirate flag. It makes one nervous about using the software, if they could get it. If this is real, it would be a really useful piece of software for which I would be extremely grateful to the developer for. I hope it is real, works and has no malware. But this all makes one a bit uneazy.

Authors web site just shows a blank web site