I've been experiencing a strange issue with SharePoint alerts that seem to happen randomly. I've setup a dailyalert on a custom list that sends a summary of all changesat 5pm, but on some days I'll receive more than 1 summary email (150+ this past Tuesday). Each email contains different informationand the total number of emails is random along with the number of records in each email.Some days the summarycomes in one email and others it comes in multiple. This is happening on our production server and I haven't been able to recreate the issue in development. Does anyone have any thoughts as to howa daily alert would get split up into several emails?We have 1MOSS 2007 app server,1 index server and 1 SQL 2005 database server.

Same thing happened to us.We had recently donea backup and restore onto the test environment so am wondering if maybe there was some corruption of the alerts as they were now on both the test and live servers/environments. Had you done a backup/restore prior to alerts problem? Anotherthing thats happened that could be possible cause is that we ran out of space on the server and took few days to notice. Still investigating - have you managed to sort it?

Issue:SharePoint list (task list) sends email notification to random users that have not been assigned to a task. Typically the email notification will say <tasktitle> has been reassigned. This will randomly occur when making any change to the task and a list of user names will be displayed in the Assigned To field and will be crossed out.It seems to only send notifications to users within the same site collection that have add a task assigned to them at some point. Details:The following configurations need to be present on your list to recreate this problem. Under the List settings > Advanced Settings the E-Mail Notification option needs to be turned to yes. The Assigned To or the column you are using for assignment needs to have Allow multiple selections turned on. Resolve:Turn off the multiple selection option or install the hotfix from Microsoft. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948945

Issue:SharePoint list (task list) sends email notification to random users that have not been assigned to a task. Typically the email notification will say <tasktitle> has been reassigned. This will randomly occur when making any change to the task and a list of user names will be displayed in the Assigned To field and will be crossed out.It seems to only send notifications to users within the same site collection that have add a task assigned to them at some point. Details:The following configurations need to be present on your list to recreate this problem. Under the List settings > Advanced Settings the E-Mail Notification option needs to be turned to yes. The Assigned To or the column you are using for assignment needs to have Allow multiple selections turned on. Resolve:Turn off the multiple selection option or install the hotfix from Microsoft. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948945

Did Kipp Sorensen's post resolve your issue or do you need alternative options?

my email alert problem is related to a document library and not to a tasks list. I am wondering if it related to there being eg 10 new documents uploaded in a day ? Last week 16 documents were uploaded one day and some users got one email only whereas others got 3 or 4 emails ( will check version of outlook in case thats the reason). When only 2 documents were added the following day, all users got 1 daily email only . These are all senior managers so I cantcheck out their laptops, outlook etc so am shooting a bit in the dark. Any help be gratefully accepted

I realize this may sound silly but perhaps worth mentioning anyway. Have you confirmed that you (or your users) don't have multiple alerts setup on the document library? You may have one setup for "all changes" while another one is setup up for "New items are added" (or something like that). This would explain getting e-mails with different item counts.Several of my users reported similar issues and I had them navigate to the document library and select the little down-facing arrow (appears next to their name in the top right corner of the screen) and select "My Settings". Once presented with the user information screen you select "My Alerts". That should list the alerts you have setup for that document library. A few of my users had created alerts they had forgotten about.

as these are managers i created the alerts for them myself. i went into users alerts on the site and theres only 1 alert for the document library per person. Its not that they are receiving copies of the same email, its that if eg 16 new doucment were added in a day, the daily summary email is broken down into eg chunks of 4 items - email1 lists the first 4 documents added, email2 lists different 4 documents added that day etc. For some users its working fine and they only get the 1 daily summary email listing all 16 documents.The version of outlook soesnt make a difference ( all have outlook 2003). It looks to me that the problem is happening on the exchange side rather than in sharepoint ? the list of 16 doucments must be correctly 'spat out' from sharepoint to exchange if some users are getting the correct email? thanks for your help

I'm having the exact same issue as described by wombleval since November. I've posted it on a number of forums but no luck thus far.

Have you noticed any patterns? Is it always the same people/accounts with the problem? Or do you find that people who reported getting just one e-mail one day got multiple e-mails the next day or vice-versa? Are there exceptions? For example do the problems subside when only a few items are added to the library (e.g. < 5)?If you are certain that there are no patterns, please disregard the rest of my post. If you think there may be some kind of pattern, you could consider the following troubleshooting approach (please note Microsoft cringes when you access these databases/tables--just stay away from UPDATES, INSERTS, and DELETES and no harm will come).1. Using SQL Server (Management Studios) expand the database responsible for storing site content (if you're not sure about the database, open Central Admin, select "Application Management" link, select "Site collection list link", select the web application and url link that is applicable to you and take note of the value next to "Database Name").2. Select the database and then click on the "New Query" button located in the menu bar at the top.3. Run some queries to check the contents of the dbo.SchedSubscriptions table (e.g. select * from dbo.SchedSubscriptions) and then start building your where clause to a point where you can compare "trouble" entries (those that are receiving e-mails in parts) with "good" entries (those that receive e-mails as you would expect).For example:Select * from dbo.SchedSubscriptions where useremail = 'goodentry@xxx.com'union allSelect * from dbo.SchedSubscriptions where useremail = 'badentry@xxx.com'4. See if you can find any patterns. Values in the Properties column? How about eventtype?

good to know someone else is having this issue! Users only really upload documents once a month so its hard to build up a pattern as yet. It would appear to be happening randomly to people. One person got multiple emails in November but a few weeks ago they got the summary in a single email whereas other managers got the email broken down that day. However i recreated all alerts for them before christmas so that could have implcations. It would definitely appear to be related to the number of documents uploaded in the day. If 2 or 3 then everyone gets a single email. As I said before I cannot really test with these people as they are senior managers. i checked the table schedSubscriptions and ALL values including the event type are the same for all users for this particular document library. Some users have daily alerts set up for other document libraries, could this affect it? 2 people who got the single email summary have only 3 alerts set up overall on that site collection ; people who got multiple emails have 6 alerts scheduled.

As wombleval has said, it appears to be related to the number of documents uploaded on the day. Very small number (2 or 3), no problem. Add a few more than that and you get the issues. No patterns beyond that though,user A might be ok but user B not, next time user B might be ok but user A not.

Just happened to me again. I have 2 identical daily summary alerts set up. One arrived containing 62 items - Correct The other 'one' arrived in SIX mails (15,5,7,5,5,25) - what the ....?

the alerts for this months meeting were fine however there seems to be no consistency or recognizable pattern so next month multiple alerts will probably be sent!! This makes no sense whatsoever

Anyone have a fix for this yet? We are having the exact same issue in our production MOSS2007 environment. The only pattern I can see is that the daily alert summaries seem to be split into multiple emails when there has been a large volume of changes on the list. If only a couple of changes, it will come thru as a single email, but if there have been many changes to the list, it will often be broken into several emails.

We are having exact the same problem (Mid Moss Farm with SP1 and Infrastructue Update). Sometimes daily alterts are comming in multiple e-Mails (today I received 8 from the same doclib (doclib contains Infopath Forms). I think it started after installing the infrastructure update a few months ago. I do not agree with LedcorGordo, that this only happens when a lot of changes were made. For todays alerts, this is true, but in the past i also received 2 or 3 altert mails with 2 changes each. (Yesterday received 2 mails with 1 and 3 entries)

Did anyone find a fix for this? We get this issue on random days, no real pattern. We have had the problem since MOSS 2007 base level all the way through to SP2 + Infrastructure update.Today we gotthree e-mails all containing 4 records, of which all were different (No duplicates). However on some days we can end up with 10 records all on one e-mail?

Just trying to keep this string fresh. We are experiencing the same issue and haven't been able to find a fix yet.

Hi Everyone, We are experiencing the same issue also. Instead of getting one large alert, the user is getting the alert split up in multiple emails. Was hoping there would a solution for this by now. Thanks, Saurabh

We are still experiencing this problem, seems to be completely random. Anyone made any progress?CheersJames

Did anyone come with a solution for this? We are having the very same issue. User sets up an alert to receive daily summary of all the new items created. User receives alert once a day however, he/she receives 4 emails with the list of the list item ID's that were created spread across the 4 emails. is this behaviour by design?

Out of curiousity, has there been any update on this issue since the last post?

I guess I have a lengthy 'ditto' on this topic. I set up the alerts for the users, and today all 50 got 14 emails with 4 items per email. Only one alert set up on the Doc Lib. When I think of the phrase Daily Summary, I think of an email that would contain all activity for one list or library that happened in the past 24 hrs. However, our users are receiving multiple emails that make up the daily summary alert. I have daily summaries setup on one library. It is setup to send an alert for items that are modified. Based on that I should have only received 1 email, but instead I received 14. Both sent at the same time. Each one had 4 items (Different items). Does anybody know why this is happening or where I need to change something?

I was troubleshooting the same issue for a user here - small farm environment, 1 WFE, 1 SQL server. The issue was that a user was receiving 5 alert notifications for every change to the list where she had set up an immediate alert. We checked and she only had one alert set. No other users were having this issue. After searching for an answer and not finding anything concrete, she was asked to delete and re-add the alert. After doing so, she only receives one email notification. So, for this user, problem solved! :-)

Wish it was that easy. Problem only occurs randomly and for random users. You could have done nothing and that user recieve one email notification the next time round.

We are having the exact same issue and after several months of observation and research still do not have a solution but have identified the following: 1) The # of emails on a given day can be diverse among users. I may get one Daily alert with 20 items in it, and "Joe" will get 4 emails with a diverse number of items in them. Emails do not contain duplicate entries, but parts of the whole. 2) The # of metadata columns on the items in the list/library is small - and therefore should not be affecting this (another thread mentioned that may be the culprit). 3) The # of changes to the list/library that are included in the email has been as large as 27 in 1 email, yet other days, 4 changes will generate a slew of emails. i.e. This issue does not appear to be due to the size of the email or amount of data in it. 4) Immediate alerts are never in duplicate. 5) I haven't yet seen duplicate weekly summaries (and those emails obviously contain a larger # of items) - but since this problem is intermittent I'm not sure that is conclusive - just requires a larger time slice to reproduce the problem with Weeklys. 6) This problem follows no discernable pattern and Daily Alerts can "behave" for 2-3 days and then start acting up again. 7) Restarting the timer service does not seem to have any predictable affect. We used to think that restarting the timer service jogged things into behaving. But last week when we restarted the timer service one user immediately got 2 daily emails, and other users got 1. 8) We've entered an issue with Microsoft Premier Support and will see where we get. I"ll post any additional information as we move forward.

Does Microsoft came up with any resolution for this ongoing mulitple emails issue? if any one has any update/fix please update this Forum.Sarathi

can any one please put some light on this issue which is going on for almost two years. SarathiSarathi

Bump. We are having the exact same issue. Trolling the web for a solution. It happened for the first time yesterday. Until then we have had a simple daily digest each day. We will now start the process of looking for patterns. Would love a shout out here on a fix if anybody has found one. Separately, here is a great article that I uncovered in my quest for a solution: (no answer in the post, but a good high level on how timers work). http://www.rightpointconsulting.com/community/blogs/viewpoint/archive/2010/08/26/the-truth-about-how-daily-sharepoint-alerts-actually-work.aspx <<UPDATE>> The alert for today went out 'as usual' (no duplication). If this problem happens again, I will post again here. Looks like this may be a phantom that eludes us. (We will be moving to 2010 soon).

Bump. We are having the exact same issue. Trolling the web for a solution. It happened for the first time yesterday. Until then we have had a simple daily digest each day. We will now start the process of looking for patterns. Would love a shout out here on a fix if anybody has found one. Separately, here is a great article that I uncovered in my quest for a solution: (no answer in the post, but a good high level on how timers work). http://www.rightpointconsulting.com/community/blogs/viewpoint/archive/2010/08/26/the-truth-about-how-daily-sharepoint-alerts-actually-work.aspx

We have been experiencing this same issue (some alerts being split over multiple emails, not duplication) with a very simple Announcements list with Weekly alerts. The alerts were setup by the site owner for a group of about 30 people at one time. The problem is intermittent but it does seem like the closer you post to the scheduled alert the more likely it is to happen. Also, the site is using a different time zone in Regional Settings. At first we though it might be bug with DST in combination with the -2 hrs compared with the server time zone. DST is out of the picture now though. Also we've made sure we post 2 hrs ahead of the alert to take the regional setting out of it. We're on the WSS April 2010 CU (12.0.0.6535). Would love to find a solution to this!

We have been experiencing this same issue (some alerts being split over multiple emails, not duplication) with a very simple Announcements list with Weekly alerts. The alerts were setup by the site owner for a group of about 30 people at one time. The problem is intermittent but it does seem like the closer you post to the scheduled alert the more likely it is to happen. Also, the site is using a different time zone in Regional Settings. At first we though it might be bug with DST in combination with the -2 hrs compared with the server time zone. DST is out of the picture now though. Also we've made sure we post 2 hrs ahead of the alert to take the regional setting out of it. We're on the WSS April 2010 CU (12.0.0.6535). Would love to find a solution to this!

We have the same issue on a MOSS 2007 Doc library. SOme get many alerts, others (like me) get one. No one had any immediate alerts set and the patterns is random. Happened today for the first time when someone added a large number of new documents. Feels like SharePoint is choking under the load of having to create those alerts. Glad to know we are not alone!

HI, I am also facing the same in daily alerts. has anyone any solution to this? Thank, Rahul Rashu