Duplicate Detection — Find, Review, and Remove Duplicate Emails

When you upload multiple files to a project — say a Sent folder and an Inbox, or two overlapping date-range exports — the same email often appears in more than one
file. RedactBox spots these automatically using the Message-ID header (an RFC 2822 standard that's globally unique per email), so it finds true duplicates across files rather than relying on fuzzy matching.

How will you know

If your project contains duplicates, a banner appears above the email list:

X items appear more than once (Y extra copies to remove)

Click Review duplicates to open the Manage Duplicates panel. You can also open it any time from Tools → Manage Duplicates (Ctrl+Shift+D).

In the filter panel, turn on Needs duplicate review to narrow the list to items that still have unresolved copies. Resolved groups, dismissed groups, and items
you've already trashed are hidden automatically.

Inline chips on email rows

Each email in a duplicate group gets a small chip beside its subject:

• Original (green) — the copy currently marked as the keeper

• Duplicates (yellow) — an extra copy that hasn't been resolved yet

Click a yellow chip to open a popover showing which file is being kept, why, and a Resolve duplicate button. Click a green chip to view the group it belongs to.

The Manage Duplicates panel

The panel has three tabs:

• Active — the wizard for groups you haven't reviewed yet

• Resolved — groups you've already handled, with per-row Undo

• Dismissed — groups you've chosen to ignore

Reviewing and resolving a group

Resolving means choosing which copy of an email to keep and trashing the rest. The kept copy stays in your project; the others are marked as trashed and excluded from exports.

1. On the Active tab, the wizard shows how many groups were detected and how many extra copies — click Next

2. Each group shows the copy being kept (marked Original, with a badge explaining why — Smart pick, Newest, or Oldest) and the copies to trash. Click any row to open a read-only preview.

3. Resolve a single group with its inline Resolve button, or select multiple and resolve them together

4. Click Resolve to confirm. Large batches run in chunks with a progress indicator so a big job won't freeze the screen.

If auto-approve the kept original is on in Settings, the copy you keep is marked as Processed and ready for export automatically. See Duplicate settings for the defaults.

Quick-resolve from an email row

You don't have to open the full panel for every group:

1. Click the yellow Duplicates chip beside an email

2. The popover shows the copy being kept and why. Tick Also approve the original if you want the kept copy marked Processed in one go.

3. Click Resolve duplicate

The chips across the whole group update together with a short fade.

Dismissing a group

Dismissing tells RedactBox I've seen these — don't flag them again. Nothing is trashed; the group just moves to the Dismissed tab.

1. Find the group on the Active tab

2. Click Dismiss

The banner count drops and the group disappears from the Needs duplicate review filter.

Undoing and restoring

• Undo a resolved group — on the Resolved tab, click Undo on the row. The trashed copies come back and the group moves to Active.

• Undo all resolved groups — click Undo all, then Click again to undo all to confirm. The button reverts on its own after 4 seconds or if you click
  elsewhere.

• Restore a dismissed group — on the Dismissed tab, click Restore on the row.

Re-emerged groups

If you dismiss a group and later upload a new file containing another copy of the same email, RedactBox flags the group as re-emerged on the Active tab so you can review it again. There's no need to manually restore — it finds its way back to your attention.

Effect on exports

Once you resolve a group, the extra copies are trashed and excluded from any export you run afterwards — ZIP, PDF, or bulk exports. Only the copy you kept appears in the output. Dismissed groups have no effect on exports; all copies stay in.