ALL OF A SUDDEN THUNDERBIRD 91..3.2 DOES NOT DISPLAY CONTENTS OF INBOX FOLDER
Gentlemen, Good Morning to all.
We are software developers and system integrators and have been loyal users of Thunderbird. This morning, after a few days of holiday here in the USA, I was cleaning-up by Inbox and created and ran a few new rules. They seemed to have run and moved messages to the intended folders. At some point, when the view came back to the Inbox, I noticed the list was empty.
I assumed it was a refresh error and rebooted the Windows 10 Pro desktop computer. When I went back to the InBox, I had two messages -- one from 0301 hrs this morning and the other from a few hours later.
I assumed that the local database had gotten corrupted to look around for the tools to rebuild the DB. That did not solve any problems.
I started to explore the mail account and found that TB could display the messages in the folders, but not the Inbox. Since since this account is more than 15 years old, I moved thru a bunch of folders to see if there were relatively new messages. All seems to be fine at the folder-level.
Since we operate our own mail server, I went to that machine and looked at the mail folders being managed by ICEWARP. I could access the messages thru the web mail interface. Looking at the OS, there are 114,866 files --most of them with a .IMAP suffix and 241 folders, which seemed to mostly be updated around 0523 hrs.
I've rebooted the server a few times,,but that did not resolve the problems. I've sent a new message, which arrived in the Inbox and was readable.
I've checked to confirm that all folders are Subscribed to. Yup. All have a checkmark.
So, now there are the 3 rquestions: 1. Has anyone seen this problem before and what was the cause? 2. What do I need to do to get Thunderbird 91.3.2. (32-bit) to recognize the message files? 3. If I cannot get TB to recognize the files when connected to the mail server, can I use IMPORTEXPORTTOOLS V11.1 to import the files from removable media?
Any assistance would be appreciated as I need access to the emails.
Thank you
Mike Grason Software & Systems, Inc. USA <removed phone#>
Modified by James (On Leave)
Chosen solution
SF HOWE, Good Morning
Once we concluded that the problem was not "client-side", I started to look thru the Icewarp documentation and found that there is one SQLITE CACHE.DB file for each mailbox.
There was one piece of documentation which referred to "renaming the [suspicious] CACHE.DB file" so that the server would create a new one.
Well, that didn't work as advertised, but I got the idea and looked further. I found that in System >> Advanced >> Directories there's a little used setting for rebuilding the Directory Cache Files.
I ran it and it chugged along for 30-45 minutes, but when I came back to my computer, there were now entries in the Inbox.
Which now brings me back to the originally reported problem: I was configuring new Filter Rules and somehow, somewhere, where the processes were moving messages from the InBox to the designated folders, there was a corruption.
(From a programming perspective wouldn't you have to open the Cache.DB file in R/W Mode in order to write to the new folders and delete from the InBox?
Wanted to thank you for your assistance. It was good to have someone to bounce this off of. Feel free to close this ticket, now
Happy Holidays
Mike
Read this answer in context 👍 1All Replies (4)
When you restarted Windows, there were two new messages in the Inbox. That suggests you have View/Threads set to Unread instead of All, or the Unread button on the Quick Filter Bar is selected. You might have deeper issues with folder corruption, but it's always best to first look at the simple causes. Another simple diagnostic is to Repair Folder from Properties in the folder context menu, which rebuilds the folder index file.
Mail from backups can be added to TB with either ImportExportTools NG or manually by copying mbox files into the Mail/Local Folders subfolder of the profile, with TB closed.
When you restarted Windows, there were two new messages in the Inbox. That suggests you have View/Threads set to Unread instead of All, or the Unread button on the Quick Filter Bar is selected. You might have deeper issues with folder corruption, but it's always best to first look at the simple causes. Another simple diagnostic is to Repair Folder from Properties in the folder context menu, which rebuilds the folder index file.
Mail from backups can be added to TB with either ImportExportTools NG or manually by copying mbox files into the Mail/Local Folders subfolder of the profile, with TB closed.
SFHowes, Thank you for the feedback.
I checked (again) the Threads and it is configured for ALL.
So, I went to Properties >> Folder Properties and prepared to do a repair. I confirmed that the name was INBOX, and that its location on the ICEWARP server mapped to the physical location. The Location parameter reports there to be 4 messages with a total size of 274 KB --- certainly far from the list I can see by browsing the server's directory.
One more piece of the puzzle, which might help you help me....
When I went to a different machine where I use Microsoft Outlook and connected to the IMAP account I noticed that Outlook displayed something like 3600 unread messages and then started to do a count-down until it got to 3.
I'm beginning to think its a server-side problem, and have started to look at ICEWARP documentation to see what I can learn.
Here's one tech note I've found so far... https://support.icewarp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013722178-Reset-the-WebClient-and-Directory-Caches
It's been a long day, and I don't want to do anything which might be unrecoverable. I'm going to step back and think about these other issues for a few hours.
Thank you for your assistance. If you leave the ticket open, I'll update it
Regards Mike
Chosen Solution
SF HOWE, Good Morning
Once we concluded that the problem was not "client-side", I started to look thru the Icewarp documentation and found that there is one SQLITE CACHE.DB file for each mailbox.
There was one piece of documentation which referred to "renaming the [suspicious] CACHE.DB file" so that the server would create a new one.
Well, that didn't work as advertised, but I got the idea and looked further. I found that in System >> Advanced >> Directories there's a little used setting for rebuilding the Directory Cache Files.
I ran it and it chugged along for 30-45 minutes, but when I came back to my computer, there were now entries in the Inbox.
Which now brings me back to the originally reported problem: I was configuring new Filter Rules and somehow, somewhere, where the processes were moving messages from the InBox to the designated folders, there was a corruption.
(From a programming perspective wouldn't you have to open the Cache.DB file in R/W Mode in order to write to the new folders and delete from the InBox?
Wanted to thank you for your assistance. It was good to have someone to bounce this off of. Feel free to close this ticket, now
Happy Holidays
Mike