What do you mean?  As in a "Phantom Rule" was in the Exchange Mailbox or something client side? 

I'm not sure if that is the correct term but a "Phantom Rule" is a server side rule that is actually there but the Outlook client does not reflect it.   I think it's the result of an upgrade.   The one site I saw it was an upgrade from 5.5 to 2003.    I forget the utility from MSFT but they had the equivalent to ADSIEdit for an Exchange Mailbox to see all the real nitty gritty and edit it.

Or do you mean the silly user had their own private "Forward mail" rule created and forgot about it.  Like "Forward all emails to this Group".

Of course reinstalling Outlook by proxy usually kills off the leprechauns, pixies, gnomes, fairies and other "Magical" creatures that would have been hiding in there.

Just don't tell anybody.  It'll be our little secret.

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Well all else fails, make an offering to the computer gods. Preferably in small unmarked bills.

Rules or delegates should be checked on the others

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cheers
Andy

No rules are used by the cleints or server so maybe just a corruption of the send and recieve function though it being an intermittent issues seems to disparage that. So far so good after about almost 2 weeks after I blew away the client and deleted all application data folders and outlook profile, resintalled outlook seems to be the fix.

Good news I guess, though I thought I remember reading that Exchange was seeing multiple messages via tracking? I dont see how that would be happening if it was just the outlook client.

 Interesting.

So yea the cleint reinstall didn't work, the multiple messages just happened again today. I'm at a real loss as to why this problem is so intermittent that it doesn't occur for almost 2 weeks. Vwalton, did you resolve your issue?

I think I've at least found the cause of the problem for the second time....it looks like it was indeed a client issue, the issue just happened today so I took a look at the users laptop. I looked at the send\recieve menu and it had send mulitple times, so I went to the send\recieve settings, Define send/recieve groups but it never would pull up that window. I checked the task mgr and Outlook was opened 3 times. So it looks like that is why the issue was so intermittent, Outlook would occasionally not close and then it would be open 2 or 3 times thus causing to send multiple messages. I think it may have to do with our new CA antivirus software so I uninstalled that and reinstalled. We'll see but I'm at least 99.9 % sure that Outlook not closing properly is the reason why mulitple messages were being sent out. Not sure why it wasn't closing but this would explain why it wasn't happening to everyone and everytime.

Which version of Outlook is it?  I've had a fairly similar issue with the old 2000 client a while ago where the mailbox was also being opened by 2003 (there was a patch I think).

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cheers
Andy

Outlook 2003, I have patched the problem users machines as well so hopefully that coupled with the antivirus reinstall will solve the issue.

Fingers crossed!

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cheers
Andy

And don't forget the magic incantations and magic words.   They're especially important with weird stuff.

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Well all else fails, make an offering to the computer gods. Preferably in small unmarked bills.

I forgot about this thread and just re-discovered it. Yes, I saw the same thing - multiple copies of Outlook.exe processes running w/ no interface. I've written a simple script in AutoHotkey that will run Outlook only after checking for, and killing, these rogue Outlook processes. That and user education (how to check) seems to be working, but it does beg the question of what is starting it. I believe it's an add-in, and iTunes has to be my #1 suspect (even though I have seen it happen without iTunes installed).