Inbox Empty after "Compact"

[Doc]

TB 15.0.1 - Win 7 Pro 64

Have a large profile. Was compacting 50mb inbox and, after completing,
all emails in inbox where 'gone', missing, not visible.
File check in Windows Explorer showed "0" kb size with very small MSF.
Did not delete files, they just disappeared.
Shortly thereafter a popup said "Inbox full" but nothing else.

Any experience with such calamity?
Anyone know why/how this happens?
I have a backup but it is four days old so inbox is stale. This won't
kill me but I sure wish it had not happened.

Thanks
--

"Doc" in Arizona
mailto: doc@crosstactical dot com

[WaltS]

Did you try right clicking on your Inbox, selecting Properties, then
click Repair Folder?

--
Fedora 17 (64-bit)
Gnome or KDE Desktop
Thunderbird Beta
Yes, I am.

[Doc]

On 9/12/2012 08:52 AM, WaltS typed this:

Well, not exactly. I closed TB and renamed the Inbox.msf file to no
avail. Lost 8 days of inbox (about 50 MBs) since last backup. Have never
in the some 20+ years of Mozilla client use had mail just go away.
So very strange. Thanks!!!

[Herb]

Do you happen to use the QuickFolders add-on?

--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk

[Doc]

On 9/12/2012 09:41 AM, Herb typed this:

Thanks Herb, no... just added columns... nothing else.

I have never had anything like this happen. I even went thru the 'many'
folders just to see if somehow it was moved/copied someplace (even
local) but nope, gone quicker 'n snot.
Not one idea why or how... frustrating.

[gmlitt...@gmail.com]

I have encountered a similar problem today and am hoping someone can help.
All of the Inbox messages that I read are deleted as soon as I leave the Inbox and go to another box. The unread messages are not deleted.

My settings under Folder Properties for the Inbox include, and always have included, the instruction "Do not delete any messages." I have run the "Repair Folder" utility, as mentioned earlier in this thread. It went to work building a summary for the folder, but this did not solve the problem of files being deleted.

I'm pretty sure that Thunderbird did an automatic update yesterday, but I didn't note this problem until this morning.

Any light anyone can shed would be most appreciated.

Gail

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

gmlittlejohn wrote:

> I have encountered a similar problem today and am hoping someone can
> help. All of the Inbox messages that I read are deleted as soon as I
> leave the Inbox and go to another box. The unread messages are not
> deleted.

They are not deleted. You've simply hidden them.

Go to the menu. View > Threads > All

--
-bts
-Most common question #2

[Chris Ilias]

On 12-09-12 11:31 AM, Doc wrote:
> TB 15.0.1 - Win 7 Pro 64
>
> Have a large profile. Was compacting 50mb inbox and, after completing,
> all emails in inbox where 'gone', missing, not visible.
> File check in Windows Explorer showed "0" kb size with very small MSF.
> Did not delete files, they just disappeared.
> Shortly thereafter a popup said "Inbox full" but nothing else.
>
> Any experience with such calamity?
> Anyone know why/how this happens?
> I have a backup but it is four days old so inbox is stale. This won't
> kill me but I sure wish it had not happened.

It's a bug in which messages get temporarily removed from view after
you've compacted the folder. If you select another folder then switch
back, you should see the messages.

--
Chris Ilias <http://ilias.ca>
Mailing list/Newsgroup moderator

[gmlitt...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, September 12, 2012 5:12:42 PM UTC-4, Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
> gmlittlejohn wrote: > I have encountered a similar problem today and am hoping someone can > help. All of the Inbox messages that I read are deleted as soon as I > leave the Inbox and go to another box. The unread messages are not > deleted. They are not deleted. You've simply hidden them. Go to the menu. View > Threads > All -- -bts -Most common question #2

Thank you so much. I thought there must be a toggle for that somewhere, but I had no idea where. This was so simple. Problem solved! Much gratitude!

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

You're welcome. For some reason, people seem to get that set to view only
Unread messages, and they panic and think all their mail was deleted. I
don't know why but it happens a lot.

--
-bts
-Explore Your Menus

[WaltS]

On 09/13/2012 07:55 AM, Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
> gmlittlejohn wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday, September 12, 2012 5:12:42 PM UTC-4, Beauregard T.
>> Shagnasty wrote:
>>> gmlittlejohn wrote: > I have encountered a similar problem today and am
>>> hoping someone can > help. All of the Inbox messages that I read are
>>> deleted as soon as I > leave the Inbox and go to another box. The
>>> unread messages are not > deleted. They are not deleted. You've simply
>>> hidden them. Go to the menu. View > Threads > All -- -bts -Most common
>>> question #2
>>
>> Thank you so much. I thought there must be a toggle for that somewhere,
>> but I had no idea where. This was so simple. Problem solved! Much
>> gratitude!
>
> You're welcome. For some reason, people seem to get that set to view only
> Unread messages, and they panic and think all their mail was deleted. I
> don't know why but it happens a lot.
>

Seems it is getting worse instead of better.

https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2012-September/002121.html

But, "The only common links appear to be AVG anti virus"

--
Fedora 17 (64-bit)
Gnome or KDE Desktop

Thunderbird Earlybird

[Ron Hunter]

On 9/13/2012 6:55 AM, Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
> gmlittlejohn wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday, September 12, 2012 5:12:42 PM UTC-4, Beauregard T.
>> Shagnasty wrote:
>>> gmlittlejohn wrote: > I have encountered a similar problem today and am
>>> hoping someone can > help. All of the Inbox messages that I read are
>>> deleted as soon as I > leave the Inbox and go to another box. The
>>> unread messages are not > deleted. They are not deleted. You've simply
>>> hidden them. Go to the menu. View > Threads > All -- -bts -Most common
>>> question #2
>>
>> Thank you so much. I thought there must be a toggle for that somewhere,
>> but I had no idea where. This was so simple. Problem solved! Much
>> gratitude!
>
> You're welcome. For some reason, people seem to get that set to view only
> Unread messages, and they panic and think all their mail was deleted. I
> don't know why but it happens a lot.
>

I have noticed that if I compact, lately, I have to exit the server, and
go back to get even unread messages to display again. Trivial, but
annoying.

[Ron Hunter]

Not here.

[EE]

I hope you are not using the Inbox as a long-term storage facility. It
was never meant to be used that way, and Tbird will probably gum things
up again if you keep doing that. See this page:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keep_it_working_%28Thunderbird%29

[Millwood]

Corruption is a bug in the design or implementation. Keeping INBOX
small to avoid corruption is embarrassing advice. And using the INBOX
as a cron file of mail not immediately deleted is the way I've always
worked. search is a lot better than working to categorize mail when
received.

If the right defaults for compaction are when 75KB will be saved and
don't ask, why does the user have to stumble upon this advice and reset
them. Why isn't it the default?

[Millwood]

Millwood wrote:

>
> If the right defaults for compaction are when 75KB will be saved and
> don't ask, why does the user have to stumble upon this advice and reset
> them. Why isn't it the default?

Because you can't even set that value less than 1MB in current thunderbird!

[goodwin]

you should be aware that the mozillazine kb is /not/ kept up to current
releases, although it is a useful referrence anyway.

[goodwin]

On 09/13/2012 12:36 PM, Millwood wrote the last paragraphs, responding
to EE:

>> I hope you are not using the Inbox as a long-term storage facility.
>> It was never meant to be used that way, and Tbird will probably gum
>> things up again if you keep doing that. See this page:
>> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keep_it_working_%28Thunderbird%29
>>
>>
> Corruption is a bug in the design or implementation.

brilliant deduction...

> Keeping INBOX small to avoid corruption is embarrassing advice. And
> using the INBOX as a cron file of mail not immediately deleted is the
> way I've always worked. search is a lot better than working to
> categorize mail when received.

putting that paragraph into comprehensible english would help here...

[Lance]

What I do is filter my inbox to a folder called "Incoming".
Completely eliminates the problem!

[The Real Bev]

What problem?

I have several inboxes with 1200 messages each. No problems so far.
Every once in a while I try to delete the cruft and move what I want to
save to other files, but it's grim work and not all that rewarding.

--
Cheers, Bev
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
666øF -- the oven temperature for roast beast.

[Was Greywolf]

On 14/09/2012 1:02 AM, The Real Bev wrote:
[...]

> I have several inboxes with 1200 messages each. No problems so far.
> Every once in a while I try to delete the cruft and move what I want to
> save to other files, but it's grim work and not all that rewarding.

I do this at least once a week, to keep the tedium short enough to be
bearable.

--
Best,
Wolf K.

[Ron Hunter]

Since I am using IMAP, and keeping emails in the inbox results in them
all being loaded onto my phone, I have taken to deleting 99% of the
email I get after reading. Anything important goes into the archives.
Makes compacting quite fast.

[Je...@nospam.fake]

Sorry to but in: I use QuickFolders. Is there a possible problem?

[Wayne]

Under "normal circumstances" this would be merely a very annoying
problem and resolved as you suggest Chris.

But in recent releases there has been true dataloss which is not
recoverable. It is hoped this will be fixed via patches in TB16 beta 3,
to be issued shortly via http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/channel/

Look for an announcement of beta 3 in a few days.

[Doc]

On 9/26/2012 04:32 AM, Wayne typed this:

Wow... I am VERY SORRY that as the OP I did not come back to this issue.
I did visit it for a few days and thought 'well, that is that' and moved
on. Thank you all and especially those indicating it is/was a bug.
I use folders and move 90% of all mail to those folders almost every
other day HOWEVER we had moved (geographically) and my mail maintenance
had lagged. The loss was not catastrophic but did include a couple of
dozen important communications "but" I found some of that content quoted
in a few 'responses' so I was able to ameliorate some of the damage.
I love TBird and part of my chagrin was simply that it has never bitten
me and always plays fair. I am back on my 'maintenance' including off
drive backups of the profile completely and so this won't probably be an
issue in the future. Thanks to all who answered and helped.

[Robert Miles]

I've seen something similar enough that you might want to watch for it.
If I have an Inbox open when the compaction starts, the contents will
be hidden (but not deleted) until I wait for the compaction to finish,
click on some other folder, and then click on the Inbox again.

If it reports Inbox full, that may mean that you need to move most of
what is now in the Inbox into some other folder (but likely needs to be
somewhat less than 50 MB per folder).

[ccbe...@gmail.com]

Yesterday I had a very similar experience. Was working in my TBird inbox when the contents of the inbox disappeared. They did not reappear when I went to another folder and came back, rebuilding index files had no impact, and indeed the inbox file showed as 0kb. I had to revert to a restore from several weeks ago. There was a brief power "blip" at around the time this happened, don't know if that could have caused the problem. I have a laptop so it did not power down. I reported this on Bugzilla.

[e...@un-labeled.com]

On Wednesday, September 12, 2012 11:31:56 AM UTC-4, Roamingdoc wrote:
> TB 15.0.1 - Win 7 Pro 64
>
>
>
> Have a large profile. Was compacting 50mb inbox and, after completing,
>
> all emails in inbox where 'gone', missing, not visible.
>
> File check in Windows Explorer showed "0" kb size with very small MSF.
>
> Did not delete files, they just disappeared.
>
> Shortly thereafter a popup said "Inbox full" but nothing else.
>
>
>
> Any experience with such calamity?
>
> Anyone know why/how this happens?
>
> I have a backup but it is four days old so inbox is stale. This won't
>
> kill me but I sure wish it had not happened.
>
>
>
> Thanks
>

> --
>
>
>
> "Doc" in Arizona
>
> mailto: doc@crosstactical dot com

I've been having this problem more and more frequently - not compact and temporarily disappear, but totally disappear seemingly at random, and when I got to look, the inbox and inbox.msf files are 0 bytes. I keep inbox fairly clean, so not too much lost, and I can always go out to server, but what I've been doing for a quick fix is immediately restoring those two files from my Jungle Disk backup. So far, I have been able to recover every single message by restoring from the most recent backup.

[Wayne]

start Windows in safe mode to ensure that antivirus or some other SW
isn't causing it