Christopher Null

Had this odd email problem and want to post about it here for posterity and hopefully to help other people if they experience it themselves.

Here’s the gist:

A few weeks ago I ran into a problem where, when I replied to two or more messages within a few seconds of each other to two or more different recipients, something strange would happen. Namely, one or more of those recipients would get the email intended for the other recipients, complete with the entire message history. Everything looks fine in the email — it’s just gone to the WRONG person.

I’ve searched online for solutions and have taken steps to fix ranging from reinstalling Microsoft Office (this is Outlook 2003) to reformatting my hard drive and reinstalling Windows XP and all my apps from scratch. But the problem started up again today.

My next hunch is that the problem is caused by Symantec Norton Internet Security’s email scanning, which obviously intercepts and processes mail during the sending process. I have that feature turned off in the hopes that it will remedy the issue.

Anyone experience anything similar? Drop a line or a comment!

Update 1: Nope, turning off Norton email scanning didn’t do it. Now wondering if I should dump Norton altogether… also considering simply buying a new computer; this one has plenty of additional problems far beyond this annoying issue…

Update 2: The problem continues, so it’s either Outlook, this PC, or Yahoo! Mail. I’m actually getting a new PC in 2 weeks and am going to upgrade to the latest Outlook on it. Meanwhile have changed Outlook to “send/receive immediately when connected” so there’s no chance for emails to linger together in the outbox. Still, so aggravating (and embarassing).

Update 3: Yahoo! thinks the problem is likely Outlook, in which case the new PC/Outlook 2007 fix ought to make it all better. Haven’t seen the problem recur since turning on immediate email sending, as expected, so that temporary fix is hopefully working for the short term.