Thunderbird Bug (1 of 5): Email header/body mismatch.
Robbie Hatley
Symptom:
Sometimes (especially when moving emails from folders in one
IMAP account to folders in another IMAP account -- such as after
changing email addresses for a discussion group or newsletter)
some email headers will become "disconnected" from the email bodies,
and point to the wrong email. Often 5 different headers will point to
the same email body (a body that does not belong to any of those
headers), and the 5 email bodies themselves will be unreachable.
Cause?
I'm speculating that this has something to do with Thunderbird's
"threading" feature being confused by the "From" email address
being something other than what it expects. But this impression
may be wrong.
Workaround:
(This is lenghty, difficult, time consuming, and often doesn't
work... but at least, *sometimes* this works):
1. Make sure "Show Only Subscribed Folders" is checked in
Acct-Opts/Acct/Svr-Stngs/Advanced.
2. Unsubscribe from the affected folder.
3. Exit Thunderbird.
4. Wait at least 15 seconds (else you get "not responding").
5. Restart Thunderbird.
6. Let Thunderbird run until it gets through refreshing everything
(anything from a few seconds to several hours).
7. Resubscribe to the affected folder. You may need to spend
several hours f#%^!$g around with the "refresh" button on the
"subscribe" window and exiting/restarting TB dozens (or hundreds)
of times to get this workaround to actually work. But be patient.
At least it's "free" software. So go ahead and burn your time
as if it was really free. Might as well. Whee! We're really
having fun now!
8. Exit Thunderbird again.
9. Wait at least 15 seconds (else you get "not responding") again.
10. Restart Thunderbird again.
11. Let Thunderbird run until it gets through refreshing everything
(anything from a few seconds to several hours) again.
12. With luck, the affected folder will re-create itself and download
fresh copies of all the emails from the server, and the headers
and message bodies will now all sync up. (*Without* luck, you're
screwed. If you really want to ever see those emails again, you'll
have to do into the files with a text editor, find the messages,
and copy them to external files.)
Note that the above work-around won't work if 3rd-level subfolders
are involved, as Thunderbird has issues with those. (See my next
message, about that issue.)
--
Cheers,
Robbie Hatley
Stanton, CA, USA
lonewolf (at) well (dot) com
http://www.well.com/user/lonewolf/
Irné
Right-click on the folder, select Properties, click the Repair Folder button.
-- Irné
Robbie Hatley
On 2010-09-04 3:41 PM, Irné wrote:
> Have you tried repairing the folder?
How?
> Right-click on the folder, select Properties, click
> the Repair Folder button.
Ummm... ok. "Repair" is not a property of folders, though;
it's an action. It doesn't belong on the "Properties" box,
which explains why I never noticed its existence; it belongs
on the folder right-click menu itself, or perhaps even on
a toolbar.
Or better yet, every time you open or access a folder,
TB should check for integrity (CRC check or some such thing?),
and if errors are detected, they should be fixed internally,
silently, relentlessly. That's called "robustness".
Requiring the user to magically know-about, find, and click
a "Repair" button is broken.
Come on, when was the last time you saw a for-real piece
of software with a dialog box with a button labeled:
[REPAIR]
This feature is broken and we're too lazy to find and fix
the root cause. So when it fucks up -- and believe us,
it will -- just click this "REPAIR" button and everything
will be hunky-dory again. For a while. We hope.
That software company would be laughed out of the market
and would be forgotten in the sands of time.
And to think that the open-source community is forever
hurt and sulking because people don't take their software
seriously. They wonder, "Why??? Why??? *Why* don't we get
the respect we deserve???" Well... there's really something
to be said for 872 angry customers screaming profanities over
the telephone at your customer-service representatives. It
works wonders at lighting a fire under the butts of the
company's developers. Open-source developers, on the other
hand, don't have that. More's the pity. But perhaps I can
help with that. ;-)
Anyway, thanks for alerting me to the existence of that
hidden "repair" button. I'll try that the next time my
email headers/bodies get out of sync. Should be faster
than unsub/resub, providing that it actually works.
Irné
On 2010-09-05 2:23:08, Robbie Hatley wrote:
Ummm... ok. "Repair" is not a property of folders, though;
it's an action. It doesn't belong on the "Properties" box,
which explains why I never noticed its existence; it belongs
on the folder right-click menu itself, or perhaps even on
a toolbar.
Or better yet, every time you open or access a folder,
TB should check for integrity (CRC check or some such thing?),
and if errors are detected, they should be fixed internally,
silently, relentlessly. That's called "robustness".
Come on, when was the last time you saw a for-real piece
of software with a dialog box with a button labeled:
[REPAIR]
This feature is broken and we're too lazy to find and fix
the root cause. So when it fucks up -- and believe us,
it will -- just click this "REPAIR" button and everything
will be hunky-dory again. For a while. We hope.
That software company would be laughed out of the market
and would be forgotten in the sands of time.
BTW, depending on your service provider's server, this may cause problems. If they're using something like the Win2008 server (which IMO is just stupid), it may have connection issues with your older windows. I know from experience, we've got an even older Win NT 4.0 printer RIP server ... can't print to it from Vista or Win7. That's one of the big reasons we're stuck with XP. Go figure, a company which makes products which aren't compatible with their own products! And it's not "for free", so you've got "reason to complain" but they'll wipe their a$$ on you if you do.
Standard answer: upgrade the server ... uhmm yes, for about $50 000 since we need 100 concurrent CLI's and the "new" drivers from the proprietary Océ company - which in turn don't work with the 10 year old work-horse large-format laser printer, which doesn't need replacement (for another $30 000) since it's working as good as the newest and "best". And we can't simply install onto the RIP, even though we've bought it outright, Océ's license agreement states you're not allowed to do anything to it (even though it's "yours"). They will provide an upgrade for another 50% over and above M$'s fees for the "new" server. And they certainly don't allow anything like Linux to get involved into their side of the market, not enough back-handers for them it seems.
And to think that the open-source community is forever
hurt and sulking because people don't take their software
seriously. They wonder, "Why??? Why??? *Why* don't we get
the respect we deserve???" Well... there's really something
to be said for 872 angry customers screaming profanities over
the telephone at your customer-service representatives. It
works wonders at lighting a fire under the butts of the
company's developers. Open-source developers, on the other
hand, don't have that. More's the pity. But perhaps I can
help with that. ;-)
That's why Open Source is (usually) free to use as well. Seeing as the main idea is to have numerous testers, you can't really expect them to pay for it, now can you? And if you have the ability and time, becoming a developer would help even more - they're always in short supply.
Anyway, thanks for alerting me to the existence of that
hidden "repair" button. I'll try that the next time my
email headers/bodies get out of sync. Should be faster
than unsub/resub, providing that it actually works.
-- Irné