My Mother is using AOL (full, installed version) on an OS9 IBook. Not all- but many- of the email messages she sends are sent twice. Normally, the first message is blank and is followed by a second, full text message but every once in a while there will be part of the unfinished message in the first email, too. They are addressed normally and she says that the messages will shoot off as she's typing them or sometimes even before she begins. I've watched her closely as she's writing email and she doesn't seem to have a problem "fat-fingering" the send button or anything. I'm sorry I don't have too much more detail, she hasn't emailed me a while so I haven't had a chance to compare the headers but I thought maybe someone might have had this problem.... Cleo

I don't think this is a Mac issue. Please contact AOL support.

That's the problem, Paul- there IS no AOL support! In my heart of hearts I KNOW where the problem lies but being a Windows user, I also didn't want to rule out the possibility of some keyboard hotkey or some kind of Mac specific autoresonder application or something. If anyone has any ideas, please post cleo

Oh, there's AOL support. I just don't know if I'd agree with their definition of "support." Regardless, it *is* an AOL problem. If your mom needs Internet access, set her up with a *real* ISP. p

Real ISP is the way to go. AOL sucks and that's been like that for years and years. Even before the 'All you can eat' price scheme it was a nightmare.

Boys, boys! I know, I've been trying to tell my parents that for years but they can't even remeber how to copy and paste let alone can they handle a new email routine. Please! Anyway, as it turns out- it's NOT an AOL issue. Here is what I discovered: The reason that- with seemingly no pattern at all- when my Mom sent email, the recipient would sometimes get one empty message and one normal message was this: Like I mentioned earlier, It kind of seemed as if she did have some type of "auto-reply" set either in the local email program or on the email server's website somewhere. And although it looked as if the messages she sent out were just being randomly doubled up, what was actually happening was her email was automatically replying to messages that were being sent to HER first. When I thought back, I realized that every time a duplicate message was sent, it was at some point AFTER someone had written to her. She normally respond to her email pretty quickly but in those instances where there was a slight delay, she logged onto her email server to send her response and the auto-reply caught up to the original message just a little bit sooner than she did and they both went out. Since she didn't know this was happening and so had never typed a standard note to put into her automatic reply (i.e.: Thanks for emailing me, I'm out of town right now but I'll write you back as soon as I return) the only thing that got sent back to the original person was a blank message addressed to them. What she evetually had to do was go to mac.com and uncheck the "auto reply" setting in the webmail preferences. We were able to do a little testing and it looks good, not a duplicat in site! Um, thank you for all your helpful comments, anyway fellas. Cleo, Queen of all MIS

P.S. If you Baby Geeks ever need help with your little macintosh "operating system" just let me know cleo