Thunderbird 78, two problems with message filters and updates

[Paul Schauble]

I have to mention two problems in one message, but they are entwined.

Early last year, I converted to Thunderbird x64 on Windows 10 and
converted most of my email accounts to maildir format. Everything
significant seemed to be working.

A few days ago I noticed that message filter were no longer working:
  - filters are not applied to incoming mail,
  - selecting a filter in the filters dialog and clicking Run Now does
nothing,
 - Tools/Run Filters on Folder does nothing,
 - Tools/Run Filters on Message works fine.

Checked the Thunderbird version I'm running: 78.8.0 with an update
pending to 78.8.1.

Click to install the update. TBird restarts, but I do not see an install
dialog. After restart, check the version: 78.8.0 with an update pending.

Reboot, &c, running around that circle a couple of times with no change.

Download and manually install 78.8.1

Repeat the tests of message filters, and get the same results.

So,
  1. Version updates are not working
  2.  Message filters are not working, at least on maildir format accounts.

Anything I can do except file bugs on these two problems?

  Thanks,
    ++PLS

[😉 Good Guy 😉]

On 13/03/2021 04:24, Paul Schauble wrote:

Anything I can do except file bugs on these two problems?

You can restart Firefox with all Add-Ons disabled to see if this makes any difference.

If this problem started only recently then it is likely that your FF profile is corrupted.  However, let's see if Add-Ons are the main culprit.

Good luck.

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[Chris Ilias]

On 2021-03-13 12:37 p.m., 😉 Good Guy 😉 wrote:
> On 13/03/2021 04:24, Paul Schauble wrote:
>
>> Anything I can do except file bugs on these two problems?
>
> You can restart Firefox with all Add-Ons disabled to see if this makes
> any difference.
>
> If this problem started only recently then it is likely that your FF
> profile is corrupted.  However, let's see if Add-Ons are the main culprit.
>
> Good luck.

Hi Good Guy,

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[NFN Smith]

Paul Schauble wrote:
> Early last year, I converted to Thunderbird x64 on Windows 10 and
> converted most of my email accounts to maildir format. Everything
> significant seemed to be working.
>
> A few days ago I noticed that message filter were no longer working:
>   - filters are not applied to incoming mail,
>   - selecting a filter in the filters dialog and clicking Run Now does
> nothing,
>  - Tools/Run Filters on Folder does nothing,
>  - Tools/Run Filters on Message works fine.

I won't do anything with the update question, but I can make a guess at
your filters question...

I believe that issues with filters is probably unrelated either to your
storage format or to what version of Thunderbird that you're running.

As a general thing, if you're using filters, it can take some time and
effort to get it to work correctly, especially if you're trying to do
something non-trivial.

Filters have two elements -- a logic portion (identifying messages to
process) and an action portion (what is done with identified messages).
If filtering isn't working the way you want it, in my experience, it's
typical that that your logic isn't finding the messages you want.

If you're having problems with logic, it's frequently because you're
trying to do too much in a single rule. To me, the structure of filters
isn't especially robust because of the limitations of what you can do
with Boolean logic (AND, OR, NOT and nesting within parens). And in any
rule, it's easy to use the default "match all of the following" for
multiple conditions, and forget to change to "match any of the
following" or "match all messages".

When you see that kind of thing happening, the best approach is to
simplify your logic by minimizing the number of conditions you use in
any filter, and doing more filters with fewer conditions.

When you're playing with filters, it's also useful to enable logging
(and use rules with descriptive names). There are limitations to logs,
in that they can only tell you which messages they hit (and not give you
a lot of clue of messages missed). This is also a reason to use
narrowly-focused filters (and make sure you have descriptive names),
because the logging can help you identify your logic errors.

Smith