Remove Duplicate Messages not working

[Herb@UK]

After a mysterious Thunderbird 'hiccup' yesterday, I ended up with
several thousand duplicate messages from the last couple weeks, which
were downloaded again from the mail server(s) and filtered into various
folders, as per my filter settings.

I want to have a 'clear-out', but neither "Remove Duplicate Messages
0.1.13" (which I have now disabled) nor "Remove Duplicate Messages
(Alternate) 0.3.12" is working for me.

When I run the latter, "Searching for duplicate messages" appears in the
status bar, but then nothing else actually happens. I have contacted the
author of the add-on and am awaiting a reply.

Meanwhile, does anyone have any comments?

In case it is relevant, I am (deliberately) on TB 24.8.0

--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk

[Tanstaafl]

On 2/2/2016 2:44 AM, Herb@UK <H...@UK.dca1.giganews.com> wrote:
> After a mysterious Thunderbird 'hiccup' yesterday, I ended up with
> several thousand duplicate messages from the last couple weeks, which
> were downloaded again from the mail server(s) and filtered into various
> folders, as per my filter settings.
>
> I want to have a 'clear-out', but neither "Remove Duplicate Messages
> 0.1.13" (which I have now disabled) nor "Remove Duplicate Messages
> (Alternate) 0.3.12" is working for me.
>
> When I run the latter, "Searching for duplicate messages" appears in the
> status bar, but then nothing else actually happens. I have contacted the
> author of the add-on and am awaiting a reply.
>
> Meanwhile, does anyone have any comments?

Don't use POP3's option to 'keep messages on server', use IMAP.

This POP3 option has *always* been prone to what you are experiencing,
regardless of how long you've been using it and never had it happen before.

[David E. Ross]

Or merely uncheck the checkbox for "Leave messages on server".

--
David E. Ross

The Crimea is Putin's Sudetenland.
The Ukraine will be Putin's Czechoslovakia.
See <http://www.rossde.com/editorials/edtl_PutinUkraine.html>.

[Tanstaafl]

On 2/2/2016 10:39 AM, David E. Ross <nob...@nowhere.invalid> wrote:
> On 2/2/2016 6:24 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:

>> Don't use POP3's option to 'keep messages on server', use IMAP.
>>
>> This POP3 option has *always* been prone to what you are experiencing,
>> regardless of how long you've been using it and never had it happen before.

> Or merely uncheck the checkbox for "Leave messages on server".

My response ass-u-me'd that the OP was using that option for a reason,
and IMAP is the only *real* solution for accessing the same messages
from multiple clients/devices.

[Good Guy]

On 02/02/2016 15:43, Tanstaafl wrote:

My response ass-u-me'd that the OP was using that option for a reason,
and IMAP is the only *real* solution for accessing the same messages
from multiple clients/devices.

IMAP is a better solution these days as all your messages remain online and should something happens like HD failure or whatever, your messages are still safe.  Backups these days is not a good solution as emails are becoming bigger and disk-space requirement is also getting larger and larger.  These backups can fail as well while online storage in the cloud is the best solution I have found.  Of course, I live in a place where Internet is reasonably fast and reliable.

[Tanstaafl]

On 2/2/2016 12:28 PM, Good Guy <hello...@example.com> wrote:
> Of course, I live in a place where Internet is reasonably fast and reliable.

And limited connectivity would be about the only good reason I can think
of *not* to want to use IMAP...

[Wayne]

I'm not even sure limited connectivity is always a good reason.

Wouldn't an imap account, synced, then run offline, then resynced, be
not horribly different from a pop account with a huge inbox and
popstate.dat file? (And dealing with duplicate messages when a POS
server burps)

[B00ze]

Ohhhh, I didn't know there were addOns to remove dups. I frequently get
duplicates; Hotmail is not so great with POP and sends me the same
messages quite often. I also run TB24. I can't test the addOn just now,
I'll want to have a backup of the database before I try this and it's
getting late. But by all means, let us know your progress. I'll report
back when I have time to try it out.

PS: This addOn is able to do cross-folder; way more powerful than what I
need. Hopefully I can just click a button and have it work on the
current folder; this is all I need...

Thanks for the heads-up.
Best Regards,

--
! _\|/_ Sylvain / B00...@hotmail.com
! (o o) Member-+-David-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/Planetary-Society-+-
oO-( )-Oo Ensign Expendable, step on that rock! -Kirk

[Herb@UK]

Thanks for your reply.

I have used POP3 for decades, and it usually serves me well.

In my experience, this kind of corruption (of popstate.dat, presumably?)
is very rare and actually quite 'harmless' in the wider scale of things.

--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk

[Herb@UK]

On 02.02.2016 15:39 UK Time, David E. Ross wrote:
> On 2/2/2016 6:24 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
>> On 2/2/2016 2:44 AM, Herb@UK <H...@UK.dca1.giganews.com> wrote:
>>> After a mysterious Thunderbird 'hiccup' yesterday, I ended up with
>>> several thousand duplicate messages from the last couple weeks, which
>>> were downloaded again from the mail server(s) and filtered into various
>>> folders, as per my filter settings.
>>>
>>> I want to have a 'clear-out', but neither "Remove Duplicate Messages
>>> 0.1.13" (which I have now disabled) nor "Remove Duplicate Messages
>>> (Alternate) 0.3.12" is working for me.
>>>
>>> When I run the latter, "Searching for duplicate messages" appears in the
>>> status bar, but then nothing else actually happens. I have contacted the
>>> author of the add-on and am awaiting a reply.
>>>
>>> Meanwhile, does anyone have any comments?
>>
>> Don't use POP3's option to 'keep messages on server', use IMAP.
>>
>> This POP3 option has *always* been prone to what you are experiencing,
>> regardless of how long you've been using it and never had it happen before.
>>
>
> Or merely uncheck the checkbox for "Leave messages on server".
>

Thanks, but I deliberately leave the messages on the server for a set
period.

--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk

[Herb@UK]

Thanks, but see previous replies.

--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk

[Herb@UK]

[Herb@UK]

As I said, I have used POP3 for decades, and it usually serves me well.

At the time when I chose POP3 in preference over IMAP, there were good
reasons for the choice, although I can't remember what they were, to be
honest :-)

--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk

[Herb@UK]

Thanks for your reply.

I didn't see a cross-folder option. Where did you see that?

I any case, still no luck with "Remove Duplicate Messages (Alternate)
0.3.12". I'm in email contact with the author, but the issue remains
unresolved.

--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk

[Ken Whiton]

*-* On Tue, 02 Feb 2016, at 07:44:45 +0000,
*-* In Article
<mailman.369.1454399119.2...@lists.mozilla.org>,
*-* Herb@UK wrote
*-* About Remove Duplicate Messages not working

> After a mysterious Thunderbird 'hiccup' yesterday, I ended up with
> several thousand duplicate messages from the last couple weeks,
> which were downloaded again from the mail server(s) and filtered
> into various folders, as per my filter settings.

> I want to have a 'clear-out', but neither "Remove Duplicate Messages
> 0.1.13" (which I have now disabled)

When that version was released TB was at about v13, so it's not
surprising that it doesn't work with your TB 24.8.0.

> nor "Remove Duplicate Messages
> (Alternate) 0.3.12" is working for me.

[ ... ]

> Meanwhile, does anyone have any comments?

> In case it is relevant, I am (deliberately) on TB 24.8.0

The current version of "Remove Duplicate Messages" is 0.1.14,
which is claimed to work through TB 32. You might download and try
that.

Ken Whiton
--
FIDO: 1:132/152
InterNet: kenw...@surfglobal.net.INVAL (remove the obvious to reply)

[Tanstaafl]

On 2/3/2016 12:08 AM, Herb@UK <H...@UK.dca1.giganews.com> wrote:
> I have used POP3 for decades, and it usually serves me well.
>

> In my experience, this kind of corruption (of popstate.dat, presumably?)
> is very rare

Rare is a relative term, and sure, not everyone will experience this
problem very often, and some may never encounter it.

That said, my friend who had two of his POP accounts redownload 50,000+
messages 3 times over 2 years would disagree. I finally convinced him it
wasn't worth it.

> and actually quite 'harmless' in the wider scale of things.

Sure... it won't kill you, but it can, under certain circumstances, be
very painful (see above)...

[Burry]

My alloted space at my provider was 32MB, including
my website, so I better keep stuff at my own disk.
A "friend" liked to send me nice powerpoints and such,
blocking my email.....
Told her to stop doing that(2 or 3 times).
So for me,pop3 makes sense.

[B00ze]

On 2016-02-03 00:16, Herb@UK <H...@UK.dca1.giganews.com> wrote:

> I didn't see a cross-folder option. Where did you see that?

Quoting the AMO site:

Remove Duplicate Messages (Alternate) 0.3.12

- Action on multiple folders.

For example, suppose you have folders F1 with messages m1, m2 and folder
F2 with messages m4, m5, m6. Assume that m1=m4 and m5=m6. If you don't
set originals folders, and search for dupes in F1 and F2 together,
you'll get two dupe sets: { {m1,m4}, {m5,m6} } ; but if F1 is the
"originals folder", you'll only get { {m1,m4} } .

> I any case, still no luck with "Remove Duplicate Messages (Alternate)
> 0.3.12". I'm in email contact with the author, but the issue remains
> unresolved.

It's late again today, sorry, I'll test this soon :-)

--
! _\|/_ Sylvain / B00...@hotmail.com
! (o o) Member-+-David-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/Planetary-Society-+-

oO-( )-Oo All right who's been cooking hot dogs in the warp drive?

[B00ze]

On 2016-02-02 02:44, Herb@UK <H...@UK.dca1.giganews.com> wrote:

Alright, so I tried both addOns.

Remove Duplicates Alternate is not working; it does the same to me as it
does to you, Searching appears in the status bar but nothing else
happens. The following error occurs in the code which, I think, aborts
afterwards:

Timestamp: 2016-02-04 21:01:32
Error: TypeError: maybeNext.value is undefined
Source File: chrome://removedupes/content/removedupes.js
Line: 581

Please pass this along to the author.

Remove Duplicates, the original, is working for me, but it is quite
buggy (and old):

It appears to work anyway (I selected to search by Subject only, in
order to produce duplicates). It opens a window with a list of dupes.
However, it insists on keeping the MOST RECENT occurence, which IMHO is
the wrong way around. You are supposed to be able to edit the list and
double-click each message, to toggle which ones you want to keep, but
since a single-click takes you to the message itself (to read it) there
is no way to double-click, it always reads it as a single click.
Right-Click should show detailed info but you actually have to
double-right-click to get there. There is a "Delete Selected" button,
but since Left-Clicking takes you away from the dupes window and into
the message itself, you have to right-click to select a message. I also
tried "prefer to delete: Unread" so as to remove the duplicates that
just came in and are unread, and got some strange result where instead
of having 10 duplicates in one group, I had 5 groups of 2 duplicates
each (even tho all 10 were dupes). Reverse Search Order (one of the
settings) does not seem to work, it always selects the same messages to
be deleted/kept regardless of this option. So all in all, not exactly a
perfectly working addOn. I like the "Prefer to delete" setting, which
the Alternate addOn does not have, if only it was working right...

Anyway, keep us posted on your dealings with the author of Alternate...

Thank you.
Best Regards,

[Herb@UK]

IIRC this is probably only the third time or so this happened to me
since I started using Thunderbird many years ago.

--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk

[Herb@UK]

Thanks for pointing out that I was using a slightly out-of-date version.
I'll 'revisit' this issue in due course.

--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk

[Herb@UK]

Thanks for your comprehensive feedback.

The 'Alternate' author has stopped responding for now...

I'll 'revisit' Remove Duplicates in due course and report back.

--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk

[Herb@UK]

Thanks again for your comprehensive feedback.

I still can't get Remove Duplicates *Alternate* to work. I didn't see
any errors when I checked the Error Console the other day. Where did you
see the error you reported?

In any case, it turns out that the original Remove Duplicates does
indeed (essentially) work after all, as you said. I didn't try all the
various options, but, using the default settings, the "Delete Selected"
button appears to be working OK, except...

....it seems to stop working after "Delete Selected" has been used on a
couple or so folders and appears to require a Thunderbird restart to
make it work again. This is in TB 24.8.0 - perhaps it works more
consistently in later versions?

Anyway, I'm basically happy with the functionality, so I added RESOLVED
to the subject line 8-)

Thanks for all the input.

--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk

[B00ze]

On 2016-02-11 22:59, Herb@UK <H...@UK.dca1.giganews.com> wrote:

> On 06.02.2016 05:00 UK Time, Herb@UK wrote:
>> On 05.02.2016 02:28 UK Time, B00ze wrote:
>>> On 2016-02-02 02:44, Herb@UK <H...@UK.dca1.giganews.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> After a mysterious Thunderbird 'hiccup' yesterday, I ended up with
>>>> several thousand duplicate messages from the last couple weeks, which
>>>> were downloaded again from the mail server(s) and filtered into various
>>>> folders, as per my filter settings.
>>>>
>>>> I want to have a 'clear-out', but neither "Remove Duplicate Messages
>>>> 0.1.13" (which I have now disabled) nor "Remove Duplicate Messages
>>>> (Alternate) 0.3.12" is working for me.
>>>>
>>>> When I run the latter, "Searching for duplicate messages" appears in

>>>> status bar, but then nothing else actually happens. I have contacted

>>>> author of the add-on and am awaiting a reply.
>>>>
>>>> Meanwhile, does anyone have any comments?
>>>>
>>>> In case it is relevant, I am (deliberately) on TB 24.8.0
>>>
>>> Alright, so I tried both addOns.
>>>
>>> Remove Duplicates Alternate is not working; it does the same to me as it
>>> does to you, Searching appears in the status bar but nothing else
>>> happens. The following error occurs in the code which, I think, aborts
>>> afterwards:
>>>
>>> Timestamp: 2016-02-04 21:01:32
>>> Error: TypeError: maybeNext.value is undefined
>>> Source File: chrome://removedupes/content/removedupes.js
>>> Line: 581
>>>
>>> Please pass this along to the author.
>>>
>>> Remove Duplicates, the original, is working for me, but it is quite
>>> buggy (and old):

[snip]

> Thanks again for your comprehensive feedback.
>
> I still can't get Remove Duplicates *Alternate* to work. I didn't see
> any errors when I checked the Error Console the other day. Where did you
> see the error you reported?

You might need this:

user_pref("javascript.options.showInConsole", true);

I also use Console^2, but to get that working you have to hunt down
v1.0a3 (alpha3)...

I'll open a bug on MozDev...

> In any case, it turns out that the original Remove Duplicates does
> indeed (essentially) work after all, as you said. I didn't try all the
> various options, but, using the default settings, the "Delete Selected"
> button appears to be working OK, except...

I never actually tried to delete anything, lol; it might've been a test
profile with old emails, I still didn't want to wipe all emails if the
addOn failed - I was too lazy to make a copy of the profile...

> it seems to stop working after "Delete Selected" has been used on a
> couple or so folders and appears to require a Thunderbird restart to
> make it work again. This is in TB 24.8.0 - perhaps it works more
> consistently in later versions?

I doubt it. Personally, I'm staying on 24 until they fix the "attaching
forever" bug; I really don't care for the minor other changes they are
making now and ignoring this 10 year old bug that /everyone/ encounters.
I think there's an option to NOT show the window and just go ahead and
delete duplicates, you could try that if you feel brave...

> Anyway, I'm basically happy with the functionality, so I added RESOLVED
> to the subject line 8-)

Yeah, but I still want to see how the Alternate version works, the other
one is somewhat buggy.

> Thanks for all the input.

My pleasure.

--
! _\|/_ Sylvain / B00...@hotmail.com
! (o o) Member-+-David-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/Planetary-Society-+-

oO-( )-Oo Cardassian Cable : 4 channels? No! *5* channels!