In the past 3 months i have noticed a constant problem with my outlook account.
If anybody goes to check the webmail all messages with an attachment that are visible on the first page get marked "unread" in POP Peeper.
Does anybody know how to prevent this?
messages constantly getting marked "unread"
Re: messages constantly getting marked "unread"
I just did a quick test with this. I happen to have a lot of recent messages with attachments in one of my outlook's inbox. So I logged into the account with my browser.
PP almost immediately notified me of 1 new message in the account. The 1 new message was not actually new, but it was an unread message (it did have an attachment, but so did the other 9 most-recent messages). Interestingly, it was only the 3rd most-recent message and I had another unread message in position #2 which was not indicated as new.
What is most likely happening:
Each message has a "Unique Identifier" (UID), which is what PP uses to determine if a message is the same one as before. Sometimes, the server needs to change the UID for a particular message and when this happens, the client doesn't know that this new UID is the same message as another one. So what happens is the message with the old UID no longer exists and PP removes it; PP sees the new UID as a new message; the result being it looks like an old message gets reported as "new". Email servers are supposed to try to avoid changing the UID so that things like this don't happen; it can happen, but it shouldn't happen very frequently.
What you can do to avoid this:
Assuming that my description matches yours (you said "getting marked unread", which is not exactly what I experienced, so please confirm) -- that pre-existing *unread* messages get reported as "new" -- the one thing that should avoid it is to mark these older messages as read. I'm not suggesting that as a viable solution, I know I keep messages intentionally marked as unread and that wouldn't work for me...
Since you mentioned that it just started a few months ago, it's possible that Outlook will fix this -- this is certainly something that can/should be addressed on their side.
PP almost immediately notified me of 1 new message in the account. The 1 new message was not actually new, but it was an unread message (it did have an attachment, but so did the other 9 most-recent messages). Interestingly, it was only the 3rd most-recent message and I had another unread message in position #2 which was not indicated as new.
What is most likely happening:
Each message has a "Unique Identifier" (UID), which is what PP uses to determine if a message is the same one as before. Sometimes, the server needs to change the UID for a particular message and when this happens, the client doesn't know that this new UID is the same message as another one. So what happens is the message with the old UID no longer exists and PP removes it; PP sees the new UID as a new message; the result being it looks like an old message gets reported as "new". Email servers are supposed to try to avoid changing the UID so that things like this don't happen; it can happen, but it shouldn't happen very frequently.
What you can do to avoid this:
Assuming that my description matches yours (you said "getting marked unread", which is not exactly what I experienced, so please confirm) -- that pre-existing *unread* messages get reported as "new" -- the one thing that should avoid it is to mark these older messages as read. I'm not suggesting that as a viable solution, I know I keep messages intentionally marked as unread and that wouldn't work for me...
Since you mentioned that it just started a few months ago, it's possible that Outlook will fix this -- this is certainly something that can/should be addressed on their side.