How to Identify Duplicate Attachments in PST Files Using Outlook 2024?

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Overview: Need to free up storage space cluttered with duplicate attachments? No worries. This write-up will help you identify duplicate attachments in PST files and provide solutions to remove these duplicate attachments in PST files.

MS Outlook is a commonly used email client by home and corporate users to exchange emails for their daily work updates. The mail flow may involve a lot of duplicate attachments as the messages from internal & external senders are sent to colleagues, managers, and relevant departments.

The duplicates present in the Outlook mailbox increase the size of the database and slow down the overall performance. Thus, this blog will help you identify duplicate attachments in Outlook PST files and methods to remove the duplicate attachments in Outlook PST files.

Reasons for Attachment Duplication in Outlook PST files

  • The email with attachments is forwarded many times.
  • The same attachments from different emails may be sent from various addresses.
  • The person receiving the email has various Outlook accounts. As the same email was sent to these accounts, it creates copies of attachments.
  • The way the account of the recipient is set up can also cause duplicate attachments.
  • The attachments show up as duplicates due to some issues with email clients.

These are just a few reasons for attachment duplication in PST files. There might be other reasons for generating duplicate attachments that may vary as per the situation.

Why There is a Need to Identify and Remove Duplicate Attachments in Outlook?

For Outlook users, duplicate attachments are a major hurdle. Hence, users need to delete duplicate attachments from Outlook PST files. Here are the following issues that forces users to remove duplicate attachments:

Wasted storage space: Duplicate attachments take unwanted storage space. This creates less space for new emails or files.

Backup and Restore problems: Duplicates in the backup will increase the file size and impact the storage budget & slow restoring capability. If you restore data from backup, duplicate attachments will also be restored and complicate the report-gathering process.

Create confusion: Having identical attachments makes it difficult for users to locate important emails. This causes ineffective file management.

Data integrity issues: A lot of data integrity issues arise if one copy of an attachment is altered and others not.

Solutions to Delete Duplicate Attachments in PST files using Outlook

Attachments in Outlook may be attached to the email message or within the email body itself. Depending on this, you can remove duplicate Outlook attachments.

1. Remove duplicate attachments attached to emails

  • Launch Outlook and open the email having duplicate attachments.
  • Browse under the headers for the attachments.
  • Choose and right-click the attachment. Now, click on ‘Remove attachment’
  • Click on ‘Remove attachment’ to confirm the deletion.

2. Remove duplicate Outlook attachments from the email body

  • Open the email having duplicate attachments.
  • Look for the attachment located under the headers.
  • Click on the attachment. Once you select the attachment, it will show a dotted line.
  • Hit the Move menu and choose ‘Actions’. Hit on ‘Edit message’ from the drop-down box.
  • Finally, tap on the ‘Delete’ key to delete the duplicate attachment.

Things to Consider

  • Time consumption: Manually identifying and deleting attachments from Outlook will take a lot of time especially when there are various emails with attachments.
  • Susceptible to mistakes: Human mistakes or errors while deleting duplicate attachments may lose important data or failed to remove all duplicates.
  • Risk of data loss: Deleting wrongly attached files can lead to huge data loss especially when you don’t have a backup to restore the accidentally deleted files.
  • Time and effort: Manually identifying and removing duplicate attachments takes time and involves lots of effort.
  • Inefficiency in large amounts of data: Deleting duplicate attachments manually is impractical. If you have a large collection of emails or various folders having attachments, then manually deleting Outlook duplicate attachments is inefficient.

A Smart Way to Remove Duplicate Attachments from Outlook PST file

If you also feel that the above-discussed manual solution is not suitable for you then you can use a smart and reliable automated solution named TrustVare PST Duplicate Remover Software. This powerful program automatically identifies duplicate attachments in PST files and instantly removes them. This application can delete duplicate attachments from multiple PST files at a time.

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This Windows-based tool can delete Outlook duplicate attachments without any data loss and supports Outlook ANSI and Unicode PST files. You can use this app to remove duplicate contacts, calendars, tasks, notes, and journals from PST files. In just a few clicks, the app can remove duplicate data items from PST files.

You can get its free trial version to understand how the tool works. And if fits your needs, you can move ahead to get its license version.

Quick steps to use the suggested software

  • First, install and run the Outlook Duplicate Attachment Remover Software.
  • Then, select the PST file or PST folder containing duplicates.

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  • Choose the desired data type to remove duplicates. Here, we will choose the ‘Mails’ option to remove duplicate attachments.
  • Now, choose the desired option from the head ‘Remove duplicate type’

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  • Mention the preferred path of your system to save the output PST files.
  • At last, press the ‘Remove Duplicates’ option.

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Once you receive a PST file without duplicate attachments, easily open with Outlook installed on your system.

Bottom Lines

Through this article, we have discussed the techniques to remove duplicate attachments in PST files. You can use Outlook and manually delete duplicate attachments. But for instant, accurate, and safe outcomes, we advise you to choose the automated solution discussed above. This will ease the process of deleting duplicate attachments from Outlook.

Common Questions of Users

Question:- How to find duplicate emails in Outlook?
Answer: Using the search function of Outlook, you can find duplicate emails by the same subject, sender, or other details like attachments.

Question:- How can I delete duplicate contacts from Outlook PST file?
Answer: Using the above-explained automated tool, you can easily remove duplicate contacts from PST files.

Question:- Does the software remove duplicates from password-protected PST files?
Answer: Yes, you can utilize this software to delete duplicates from password-protected PST files.

Question:- What are the consequences of duplicates in MS Outlook?
Answer: Duplicates in Outlook create a lot of issues like:

  • Performance issues
  • Low productivity
  • Storage space issues

Question:- Why am I getting duplicate email messages in Outlook?
Answer: Duplicate emails are created due to sync issues, wrong account settings. When you set up multiple devices to receive the same emails.

Question:- Can I try the software before purchasing?
Answer: Yes, TrustVare provides a free trial version to help consumers assess its capabilities before going to the complete edition.

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