OL 2002: Mail Retrieval Problems Occur When You Receive POP Mail

If you use Outlook to download messages by using the Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3) protocol, the following message retrieval problems may occur:

• Messages that you expect to be deleted from the server after retrieval are not deleted.
• Messages that you purposefully leave on the server are downloaded again the next time a mail retrieval occurs. As a result, duplicate messages are created.
• You are prompted to log on to the server repeatedly during the download and your credentials are not accepted.

These problems occur because the POP3 retrieval design in Outlook 2002 sometimes does not issue the POP3 commands for retrieving and deleting messages in the same communication session. A Request for Comment (RFC) requirement that indicates that the RETR and DELE commands must occur in one session does not exist. However, the commands must exist in one session in certain server implementations of POP3. For example, if a POP3 sever allows only one logon during a time interval (for example, five minutes), when Outlook performs a second logon to complete the RETR/DELE command set during this time period, the second logon is rejected.

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft Office XP. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: In Outlook 2002 SP2, the POP3 retrieval design has been changed so that the RETR/DELE sequence is always completed in the same POP3 session.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was first corrected in Microsoft Office XP Service Pack 2 (SP-2).

The Outlook 2002 SP2 design change that is described in this article also allows the QUIT command to be included in POP3 protocol logging. Before the design change, the QUIT command was issued after the log file was written. As a result, it seemed that the QUIT command was never issued. The new design shows the QUIT command correctly in the log files.