Thanks for that. I tried your method but no joy. Not a problem. I think I've got it now in a pdf, all nicely sorted in the same order as listed in the index.

I'm chasing some advice on tidying up my partners mail folders. She's had something strange going on where mail hasn't deleted from the server  and has downloaded multiple times, leaving her with a large number of duplicated messages. Is there any clever way to use the filtering tools to detect duplicated messages to avoid doing it manually? She's got 3500 + messages in her new mail folder, so manual is a big task!

My other query is whether it's possible to select a block of messages easily? The only way I've found is to hold "Ctrl" down and select individually. The reason for this is that the duplicating messages only happened recently, so I'm thinking I can sort by date, then select and  move all earlier messages to a new folder, thus reducing the bulk considerably. Less messages will make it easier to sort by subject and nail the duplicates, if I have to do it manually. I suspect I could set up a filter to move everything prior to a date but if I could select a block, it'd be quick and easy.

[quote user="Rupert"]I'm chasing some advice on tidying up my partners mail folders. She's had something strange going on where mail hasn't deleted from the server  and has downloaded multiple times, leaving her with a large number of duplicated messages. Is there any clever way to use the filtering tools to detect duplicated messages to avoid doing it manually? She's got 3500 + messages in her new mail folder, so manual is a big task![/quote]

I don't have any suggestions on this one.

[quote user="Rupert"]My other query is whether it's possible to select a block of messages easily? The only way I've found is to hold "Ctrl" down and select individually. The reason for this is that the duplicating messages only happened recently, so I'm thinking I can sort by date, then select and  move all earlier messages to a new folder, thus reducing the bulk considerably. Less messages will make it easier to sort by subject and nail the duplicates, if I have to do it manually. I suspect I could set up a filter to move everything prior to a date but if I could select a block, it'd be quick and easy.[/quote]

This one is doable using the shift key.  Click on a message to select it, scroll to the bottom (or top) of the range you wish to select, hold down the Shift key then click the message at the end of the range.  The messages between the two clicks will be selected.

I DO have a suggestion for removing duplicate messages.  It's Hal Lamsters' PMUndup utility.  It works on Pegasus Mail folders so you will need to move the message into a folder and then run PMUndup on that folder file.

It's available for download in the Downloads section of this site listed as "PMUndupl update" in the Add-Ons > Tools & Utilities area.

[quote user="Rupert"]

I'm chasing some advice on tidying up my partners mail folders. She's had something strange going on where mail hasn't deleted from the server  and has downloaded multiple times, leaving her with a large number of duplicated messages. Is there any clever way to use the filtering tools to detect duplicated messages to avoid doing it manually? She's got 3500 + messages in her new mail folder, so manual is a big task![/quote]

Are we talking about Gmail here? By default Gmail does not delete POP3 retrieved mail, it archives them instead. Your partner must set the correct options using Gmail's Web interface. Other mail servers like Yahoo do delete messages, BUT if you choose not to it won't mark them as read, thus making those messages be continuously download at each server poll. GMX has a similar behavior though slightly different. Can you provide more information here?

[quote user="Rupert"]My other query is whether it's possible to select a block of messages easily? The only way I've found is to hold "Ctrl" down and select individually. The reason for this is that the duplicating messages only happened recently, so I'm thinking I can sort by date, then select and  move all earlier messages to a new folder, thus reducing the bulk considerably. Less messages will make it easier to sort by subject and nail the duplicates, if I have to do it manually. I suspect I could set up a filter to move everything prior to a date but if I could select a block, it'd be quick and easy.

[/quote]

Additionally to what Brian already said I think you should also try Select... and Quick Select, both from Folder menu. Quick Select (Ctrl+Q) can act either by Sender or Subject. The Select... menu option is much more powerful and has a bunch of options. These features are well documented on both Help and the Manual.

Many thanks for the suggestions. They were exactly the information I was chasing. I'll see how the utility goes and post an update.

The reason for the duplicate messages is not entirely clear. I know the basic cause. We had her account set to not delete messages from the server. She was accessing her account from two machines and didn't want some messages on one machine and some on the other. Basically I was trying to wean her off Hotmail and on to Pegasus.This meant a significant number of messages on the server. Obviously, every so often we have a clean out.

The failure was on her lap top which suddenly ignored the "download unread mail only" setting and started to download everything, every 300 seconds. It's done it on three separate occasions so far and I don't know why, as it's not predictable. That lap top has just been replaced so it'll be interesting to see if the new one does it.

I was wondering if there's any info around on how to use the utility? I downloaded it but the "help" file won't work with Windows 10. The messages I want to de-duplicate are in the Pegasus new mail folder. How do I run a utility on a folder?

The .chm file is the help file for Win10.  IIRC, there are limitations to where the source directory can exist from which a .chm file will run.  I tested from c:\temp\pmailundup230 where it worked.

What I remember is that you first make a safety copy of the .pmm/pmi file pair that you want to de-dup.  Then make a second copy to a separate directory and run pmailundup on that .pmi file. You then replace the original .pmm/.pmi files with the newly created ones.  Review the .chm file to make sure this sounds correct. 

Were you able to actually access the help information when you tested? I tried a variety of methods for opening and all I could  get was the index. I couldn't actually access any information.

I've attacked it with an "open anything- free trial" piece of software, which seems to have opened the files, but not in a useful manner. I've now got 20 pages of help in no particular order. I've lumped them all into a pdf and will now try and sort the pages into the correct reading order . Hopefully, all the help info is in there, so I should be able to progress.

[quote user="Rupert"]

Were you able to actually access the help information when you tested? I tried a variety of methods for opening and all I could  get was the index. I couldn't actually access any information.[/quote]

All I got was the index when trying to open the .cnm directly from the zip as well as when trying to open it from a zip extraction to a flash drive.  It wasn't until I put it in C:\Temp\pmailundup that i got it to open fully functional.