Mailbox Corruption

[gnuarm.del...@gmail.com]

I'm always saying how Eudora never lets me down, but I'm seeing a bit of corruption in a mailbox. One email shows a subject line in the preview pane, but a different subject in the email list for this mailbox. When I open the email, the subject matches the preview pane. The trouble is, there's nothing in the email.

It should be one I sent out a couple of weeks ago. I see an automatic reply was received. But I can't bring up the actual email. The email that shows in the preview and in the open email is a very old email, possibly one that was never sent. The status seems to be "sendable", the green dot with a circle in it.

Any idea of how to recover this file? I suppose I'm going to need to open in an editor capable of viewing non-printable characters? I'm guessing the file format is not entirely text.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

[DaveH2]

Have you tried recreating the table of contents (TOC) for that mailbox?
It might fix it.
Go with Windows Explorer into the folder where the mailbox files are, and find the files relating to that mailbox.
There should be a .mbx file and a .toc file.
Make sure you have Windows Explorer set to show file extensions.
With Eudora closed of course, rename the toc file to say '*.toc.old.
Restart Eudora, and it should rebuild the TOC and generate a new file.
Does the mailbox display now look any different/better?
HTH. Cheers, Dave.

[gnuarm.del...@gmail.com]

Looks like the email is lost. Now, not only is that email not showing up, another email that was a reply to the missing email is gone. However, when I search for the contents of the subject line, it shows up in a previous email toward the end in a large collection of headers. I'm thinking this reply email is no longer separated from the prior email, and for what ever reason, the missing email is simply gone.

--

Rick C.

+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

[DaveH2]

If rebuilding the TOC didn't fix it, then I'm afraid you're probably right.
Presumably you don't have a backup of the mailbox folder from before the problem happened?
Wise after the event I appreciate, but backing up Eudora folders regularly is a good thing to do.
Cheers, Dave.

[gnuarm.del...@gmail.com]

Yes, I have lots of backups. But not this recent. After 20 years of emails, my Eudora folder is 4 GB. Not so easy to maintain backups. I tend to backup once a month. I need to do a backup now, but I was hoping to fix this glitch first.

I think I have lost an email maybe three times in the 20 years. I route all my emails through Gmail which acts as a spam filter and provides email access when I'm not at home. But it doesn't include the sent emails.

People have told me to us IMAP, but that doesn't solve the sent email issue.


--

Rick C.

-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

[DaveH2]

I've never actually tried it, but the received wisdom amongst the Eudora-using community is that Eudora doesn't work very well with IMAP, even though it does support it. Messages apparently always stay on the server with IMAP, so you can't lose things, which might be considered an advantage after your experience, but of course you can always set POP to leave things on the server too!

[gnuarm.del...@gmail.com]

I would still have the same failure, because the lost message was an outbound email which IMAP doesn't address.


--

Rick C.

-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

[DaveH2]

Of course, silly me!
Actually, on my smartphone e-mail app, I can see all my sent messages, including those sent from Eudora.
If you have that facility, it might be worth looking, you never know, your missing messages might be there!

[gnuarm.del...@gmail.com]

I have looked and didn't see anything. I route all email through gmail which shows emails as conversations (with the oldest at the top, which seems to make it useless to me). I thought my posts from Eudora might show up, even if only quoted in a reply. But none of the replies quoted the email and I've never seen a sent email show up in gmail.

I suppose it is possible that it is still on the email server at my ISP. My experience is that their email client only shows emails sent through that client.

It's not a critical thing. It was a billing notice, so I'd like to have that, but I have their automated replies and I've asked them to check on the status of the invoice which has already taken two days. Sometimes it is amazing how much computers can slow things down. I had an inquiry with my bank recently and it will take them almost two weeks to lookup something in the computer.

Thanks for all the advice.


--

Rick C.

+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

[gnuarm.del...@gmail.com]

Just in case anyone is reading this thread looking for help, I found a problem with rebuilding the headers of a mailbox. I move emails from the OUT box to the appropriate folder. Rebuilding the headers seems to lose this information and tags all emails as IN emails.

--

Rick C.

++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

[gnuarm.del...@gmail.com]

Things just got worse. ALL the mailboxes show no contents on the emails. The toc information in the list pane is ok, but no contents in any emails. The .mbx files all have size. A restart of Eudora did not help.

Crap!

--

Rick C.

--- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

[DaveH2]

On Wednesday, 3 August 2022 at 21:17:24 UTC, gnuarm.del...@gmail.com wrote:
> Things just got worse. ALL the mailboxes show no contents on the emails. The toc information in the list pane is ok, but no contents in any emails. The .mbx files all have size. A restart of Eudora did not help.
>
> Crap!
>

Well I can't explain that.
You only rebuilt the TOC file of the one mailbox you were having trouble with I assume?
That shouldn't have affected any of the others.

[gnuarm.del...@gmail.com]

That was a couple of days ago anyway. But it's working now. I had already tried shutting down Eudora and restarting without success. I made a complete copy of the Eudora directory before I started dinking with anything. Then when I brought Eudora up again, it all worked!

Eudora is starting to make me nervous.

--

Rick C.

--+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

[DaveH2]

On Wednesday, 3 August 2022 at 23:31:49 UTC, gnuarm.del...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 3, 2022 at 6:05:28 PM UTC-4, dav...@sky.com wrote:
> > On Wednesday, 3 August 2022 at 21:17:24 UTC, gnuarm.del...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > Things just got worse. ALL the mailboxes show no contents on the emails. The toc information in the list pane is ok, but no contents in any emails. The .mbx files all have size. A restart of Eudora did not help.
> > >
> > > Crap!
> > >
> > Well I can't explain that.
> > You only rebuilt the TOC file of the one mailbox you were having trouble with I assume?
> > That shouldn't have affected any of the others.
> That was a couple of days ago anyway. But it's working now. I had already tried shutting down Eudora and restarting without success. I made a complete copy of the Eudora directory before I started dinking with anything. Then when I brought Eudora up again, it all worked!
>
> Eudora is starting to make me nervous.
>

I'm glad it's working again, but yes, that is strange behaviour.
If you're not already, I would certainly start making regular backups of the Eudora data!

[gnuarm.del...@gmail.com]

So another case of corruption. The message is intact, but the status/queuing is corrupted. This was a sent email and a filter moved it to another mailbox after sending, something that was set up years ago. When it showed up in the new mailbox, it was flagged wrong, not as an outbound email. I save the mailbox and the .toc, then moved it back to the out mailbox. Still corrupted with no obvious way to fix this.

A long time ago, I would dig into the mailbox to fix these. Anyone know where in the file I would fix this?

[gnuarm.del...@gmail.com]

On Monday, August 22, 2022 at 5:39:29 AM UTC-4, gnuarm.del...@gmail.com wrote:
> So another case of corruption. The message is intact, but the status/queuing is corrupted. This was a sent email and a filter moved it to another mailbox after sending, something that was set up years ago. When it showed up in the new mailbox, it was flagged wrong, not as an outbound email. I save the mailbox and the .toc, then moved it back to the out mailbox. Still corrupted with no obvious way to fix this.
>
> A long time ago, I would dig into the mailbox to fix these. Anyone know where in the file I would fix this?

I just realized it was worse than I thought. The email was composed by using "send again" and editing a previously sent email from this mailbox. Somehow, as part of the corruption, the email was not saved when I clicked the "queue" button on the email. It sent the original email instead! Even then, the email in my mailbox has no recipient, only the cc: field is filled in.

However, I've received automated replies that show the email sent did at least have the edited subject line!

Weird.

I have sent the email again, just to make sure the attachments were received. This is an invoice, so rather important! This one seems to be ok.