Search "finds" emails but when I click on them to actually read them, it shows nothing. Also, the folder where these emails are located has disappeared.
A folder that has several sub-folders (as do all my folders), has disappeared from my list of folders. Filters that would normally send new incoming emails to this folder now say, "choose folder" (they're not disabled), and of course I can't choose it anymore. When I do a search for emails that I know were in the folder, it finds them (or at least some of them, for sure; haven't checked on the hundreds) and lets me see the tops of contents, like in any normal search. So I know the emails do exist. But when I click on one to actually read it, Tbird goes through the motions of bringing the whole email up, but there's actually nothing there. The column heading are there for Data, From, Subject, Location, etc., but the there's nothing under the headings. So, I don't know what happened to the folder, and its (former) contents are out there in my computer's nether world.
Also, don't know if this is relevant; a day ago I did a backup and restore of my profile using MozBackup because I had to have a faulty hard disc replaced on my laptop. My Profile for Thunderbird was approx. 1.6 GBytes. I get 80 or so e-mails a day. The restore went fine as far as I can tell; In fact, I think I even recall noticing that the now-missing folder was there at first, but this is the first time I've tried to use it.
jlburch@mindspring.com
All Replies (7)
I'm not 100% sure, but I think Thunderbird has an indexing process that runs in the background - and if you were on some odd configuration, let's say you're connecting to a mail system that also used an archiving system (for instance Outlook with Symantec Enterprise Mail Vault).
It's possible for Thunderbird to index the email (hence you can search for it) but by the time you run the search (a week, a month, or what ever later) the Symantec Enterprise Mail vault has already archived the email.
Basically you it can search, and build an index, but anything could happen to the email between being indexed and you searching for it.
Hope that helps?
Thanks. Although I'm dealing with emails that are only a day or so old, indexing may have something to do with it. Since I have so many old e-mails (I get about 80 a day, and only delete maybe 10, and my Tbird profile is 1.4GB) I often have to wait a minute or two while Tbird is "indexing" and/or compressing. I wonder how I can look into Tbird's indexing?
Ok, back the the question and the assumptions you made.
1. Finding messages in the global search only indicates that they existed long enough to be indexed and added. Opening them failing indicates that they no longer exist.
2. That they are unavailable to your filters indicates the folder no longer exists.
So back to the issue. Your folder is missing. did it actually make it into the mozbackup, You say the disk was faulty, perhaps the physical folder that hods that Thunderbird folder and it's children was damaged and did not get backed up at all. Perhaps you could look. The mozbackup file is a zip file, so you can open it in any Zip program to inspect the contents.
The next part is looking on your new hard disk for the folder.
This was helpful, because you explained why messages appear in the "search" but cannot actually be found. Who would have guessed that a "found" msg is really lost? Tbird designers would be wise to let users know that in some way.
But, by way of update, after 3 hours with a local geek technician, it turns out that the "missing" folder was not actually missing; it inadvertently had a leading space in its name, and that apparently must have caused a problem for MOZBACKUP, which made the folder invisible ("hidden" even to Tbird). The folder had in fact been backed up and restored when I performed those respective procedures, but Tbird didn't know it. Exactly how my technician (a) discovered it and (b) made it functional again, I'm not sure. But it was helpful to know that simply finding a msg in a search does not indicate its actual presence. Thanks. I hope Mozbackup designers read this.
Please confirm what I think I just read. A bug report needs to be lodged I think, so I want to be sure I get it right.
The folder in Thunderbird had a leading space. It worked in Thunderbird but failed to make the transition via Mozbackup. When restored it disappeared
You got it right. Except that we can't be officially certain the leading space caused the problem -- you know, we haven't done experiments -- but that's the only thing my tech guy could guess as a possible cause. The now-restored folder was uncorrupted and has now been working fine since we found it. I created it a few months a go in Thunderbird and used it normally. But when, due to replacing my PC's hard drive last week, I had to save my whole T'bird profile on an external drive using Mozbackup and then tried to restore it, this one folder did not show up as part of the restore. He first looked on the external drive, found it in the profile there, and was in process of copying and "inserting" it into the restored profile on the new hard drive, when the "original" one, so to speak, appeared from somewhere in the profile that had been restored to the new hard drive. Solved my problem.
Modified by jlburch
Oh, yes! I have now deleted the leading space.