stlsailor,

Exactly how are you "downloading" your messages? Are you on an Exchange server and you are "Synching"? Or are you importing a pst file?

It almost sounds like you are importing a PST file because you got duplicates. There is something you can check to not import duplicates.

Hopefully with more info someone here can help you.

I'll try to be clearer. I'm not using exchange or importing from .pst. There are two situations.

First, I am downloading mail from Yahoo (onto two different computers) in Outlook 2007 using POP3. So when I reinstalled Windows and Outlook, it went back to day one and downloaded several thousand e-mails even though they were already in the In Box I had restored and set as default. In other words, it acted like a brand new installation even though I pointed it to a .pst file I'd been using for several years.

Second, I am doing the same from Gmail. However for Gmail I have to include the word recent: in the setup before the username or the mail will download onto one or the other computer only, but not both.

In neither case have I figured out a way to simply download the missing mail for the days the system was down.

I hope this helps.

stlsailor