Matt said

>And I will continue teaching you haw to use your computer as your past long post makes it obvious you do not know how to. Thank you. >Ctrl+C copies Ctrl+V Pastes. I'm familiar with these. >Then there is the print screen button on your keyboard. Takes a screen shot that can be pasted into other applications. I am familiar with this. However it did not paste to this thread. Which was the cause for a lot of trouble. That's why I asked xenos for an email addres; I know how to paste screenshots to email. As far as I know, screnshots can only be pasted to email. Did you see my note about my computer experience? I'm not a novice, and there is still a lot that I don't know. But I think I understand most of the basics. And I wil appreciate your help when I get stuck. Thank you. >It sounds to me from all your troubles and hangs that you have set the levels on your security software too high and they are interfering with basic functionality of the machine. That's an interesting idea which no one else has mentioned. What security settings? The only ones I am aware of are those for my ISP.

cbrookej said

Matt said

>And I will continue teaching you haw to use your computer as your past long post makes it obvious you do not know how to.

Thank you.

>Ctrl+C copies Ctrl+V Pastes.

I'm familiar with these.

>Then there is the print screen button on your keyboard. Takes a screen shot that can be pasted into other applications.

I am familiar with this. However it did not paste to this thread. Which was the cause for a lot of trouble. That's why I asked xenos for an email addres; I know how to paste screenshots to email. As far as I know, screnshots can only be pasted to email.

To paste you need to have a container that "knows" how to accept and handle the material on the clipboard. Thunderbird does understand common image formats. This forum's software does not understand images. So you need to provide it with a file and upload that file. Paint is the primary tool in Windows for converting a copied image into a file.

Did you see my note about my computer experience? I'm not a novice, and there is still a lot that I don't know. But I think I understand most of the basics. And I wil appreciate your help when I get stuck. Thank you.

>It sounds to me from all your troubles and hangs that you have set the levels on your security software too high and they are interfering with basic functionality of the machine.

That's an interesting idea which no one else has mentioned. What security settings? The only ones I am aware of are those for my ISP.

Matt is talking about general settings in your browser, and to some extent in your OS about what content is permitted. You seem to have a fair number of ordinary things not working.

Neurotypicals get by with vague directions and imprecise instructions. We can work with hints, and with things which are similar to one another but not identical, and we can work with the exceptions to the rule. But it's probably impossible to give you sufficiently precise instructions without being there and looking over your shoulder. :-(

cbrookej said

It happened again! Except this time formatting was lost from the entire document. Do you know what is going on? Formatting is preserved when I paste to Open Office. The loss of formatting seems to be restricted to this site

This little box here on the forum is a text box. It accepts text and a very limited number of HTML commands. So your expectation of pasting formatted text or images is simply not going to be fulfilled.

You will however probably make messages that are exceedingly difficult to read. Like those ones with the scroll bars in the middle of the text.

Matt said

cbrookej said

It happened again! Except this time formatting was lost from the entire document. Do you know what is going on? Formatting is preserved when I paste to Open Office. The loss of formatting seems to be restricted to this site

This little box here on the forum is a text box. It accepts text and a very limited number of HTML commands. So your expectation of pasting formatted text or images is simply not going to be fulfilled.

You will however probably make messages that are exceedingly difficult to read. Like those ones with the scroll bars in the middle of the text.

Woops replying to the end of the last page... not helpful at all really.

Zenos said

I am bowing out. I really don't think this mode of communication is going to be productive. You have been very helpful to me. I hope you can be patient enough to continue to help me. I obviously need help. >I must apologise because I have misread your reply. But whilst I was trying to show you "Options", you can also find "Account Settings" in the Tools menu. It's just above "Options". So it is. I must have previously looked at the Ff Tools menu. An error of a failing mind? >Your reply is a challenging mix of taking what is written to you literally... A characteristic of Asperger's.... >... and on you not quite following what has been written. That might be due to my short term memory loss, or some other failure of an aging mind. I would get younger if I knew how to. >In Thunderbird, if you right-click on "brookej@xmission.com"... which is your email account, a pop-up menu will appear, in which you can select the account's properties. It never occurred to to right-click on my email address. Why would it? Why would I guess that clicking on my email address would open a hidden world of settings? Newer programs seem to include many hidden functions, the location of which one is apparently supposed to guess. Or intuit? I don't have this sort of intuition. If I ever had it, I have lost it. From my perspective, programs are becoming more difficult to use, not least because of the trend toward hiding functions. I'm not good at finding things I can't see. It may be that my increasing difficulty is actually due to mental decline. Either way, I am stuck needing to use technology which has become more difficult for me. >It's just too painful to try to write material elsewhere then paste it here and and expect it to retain its formatting. Formatting has been transferring from Tb to this site years. The loss of formating just appeared today. I infer that the programming of this site changed today. I wonder if whoever made the change intended to block formatting. I suspect it was an unintended consequence of whatever he intended to do, something which math predicts in very complex systems. >My Thunderbird will appear different to yours because I am using a number of add-ons, some of which create extra entries in the drop-down menus. You and I may also have different styles in place, meaning different colours and typefaces. Thank you. Do you think this extends to items not in my Options menu? This phenomenon of not finding things which helpers expect me to see has been a recurrent problem. >Anyway, did you find your missing messages in the "Deleted" folders? At this point I don't recall what I was trying to retrieve. Everything else seems to be there. I seem to be in a bad jam. I have become dependent on computers, but, from my perspective, they have become more difficult to use. It may be that I have in fact lost a former capablility to age. Either way, I am still dependent on devices which I now need more help to use. Thank you for all your help; I really appreciate it. I hope you may bow back in when I need you again.

"Your reply is a challenging mix of taking what is written to you literally..."

This may explain our difficulty:

"Neurotypicals get by with vague directions and imprecise instructions. We can work with hints, and with things which are similar to one another but not identical, and we can work with the exceptions to the rule."

I have never encountered this term before, so I looked it up. It means anyone who is not on the autism spectrum. I have Aspergers. Our brains are wired differently. I think this is probably why you have found me a difficult pupil.

I have been dealing with science for most of my life, and neurotypical instructions are entirely novel to me. Has anyone ever gotten a neurotypical article published in a respectable journal? I doubt if neurotypical thinking is foreign only to people with Asperger's.

"your OS....seem to have a fair number of ordinary things not working."

I downloaded Tb v 45.1.1 from Mozilla. What went wrong?

As for Tb formating not transferring to this site, this just began at the end of last week. Prior to this, formating transferred along with the text. I infer that the programing for this site changed last week.

Hello, I just solved it, and here is the definitive solution.

Most of the time, POP3 accounts will dispatch emails in a "Local Folders" main folder, rather than separately into each account folder like IMAP accounts do.

This is the reason why the cure that's proposed (deleting the Trash.msf file in your mail account(s) folder(s)) doesn't work in this case.

In fact, the trash bin was actually inside the "Local Folders", but was deleted.

I checked my antivirus quarantine and found a trojan in it, so I strongly suspect it deleted both the local "Trash" and "Trash.msf" files. I'm using MS Security Essentials because AVG started to get too invasive, but other antivirus software are probably likely to act the same way, since the trash bin isn't a folder but a file, so no partial cleanup can be done !

Anyway, you should find fresh "Trash" and "Trash.msf" files inside each of your account(s) specific folder(s) as explained by other members. If not, just recreate them the way that has been thoroughly explained throughout the forum, though I suspect they aren't even actually used. :)

Just close Thunderbird, copy any of them (or just create a couple of empty text files and rename them) inside the "Local Folders" root, start the program, and job done. :)

HTH

Note : if you copy the files from another folder and they're not empty, then you'll inherit from their contents. You can cleanup your new trash bin later. I'm using automatic trash been emptying on all my accounts so they're all completely empty (size = 0) all the time. ^^

Edit : if you wish me to add the procedure to quickly open the emails folder, then just ask. :) It should have been explained above, though. :)

Edit after Gnospen's remark :

It seems the files are present in "Local Folders" folder only if you're actually using a common trash bin located there. About the accounts folders, Thunderbird will always create them inside each of them, whether you're using them or not.

So if you're using separate trash bins located inside each of your accounts sections, the the usual solution about recreating empty "Trash" and "Trash.msf" files there will work.

If you're using a unique "Local Folders" setup to group all your accounts (that's my case - but this always excludes IMAP accounts), then you'll recreate the missing files there.

I'm glad you found a solution, but there are some flaws in your explanation.

POP3 does NOT create a trash inside LOCAL FOLDERS. The trash is inside YOUR POP3 ACCOUNT-Folder.

Local Folders has its own trash for taking care of deletes from inside Local Folders. It has nothing to do with any pop3 -account.

Both are under MAIL

A good advice is to make an exception for your entire profile in your virus-protection so you don't scan it and have a whole folder put in quarantine (or deleted)

And keep your inbox small, your junk and trash empty, and all folders compacted.

OK, so maybe the files aren't created in the case you don't use a common trash bin located (onscreen) inside the "Local Folders" section.

In this case, the commonly found solution about recreating them inside the account folder where it's missing will work.

However, I'm using such a common trash bin and had the problem (that's actually how I got there), and of course the "account folder" solution didn't work.

Thunderbird obviously creates those files inside each account folder in all cases because they were all present there though I've never used them. I was assuming it would do the same for the "Local Folders" one, but anyway, if you're using one, then the files are absolutely supposed to be there.

As as soon as I added the empty files to the "Local Folders" folder, the trash bin immediately reappeared and I could delete messages again.

The reason is most probably, as I explained, because my email setup was imported from Outlook Express on my old Windows XP machine, where a unique trash bin is the rule.

Incidentally, I did find a quarantined virus the same day. I receive some spam daily, Thunderbird puts them inside the "Spam" folder, and when it doesn't, I tag the mails as spam for next time (it also transfers them immediately to the spam folder), then I always delete all of them immediately.

I also have setup Thunderbird so it empties the trash bin upon leaving : that's when the antivirus acted, as the access to the file drew its attention AND it became free to delete as soon as Thunderbird was closed, explaining why the trash bin and no other folder got deleted.

Thinking about this, I'm quite frightened now some spam would escape both Thunderbird and my attention and the inbox would get deleted... :p

I hope in such case, restoring the file from quarantine would restore the whole file... Though maybe I could just search for its location on the disk and do it manually.

I can edit my post above to precise it's only in case there's a common trash bin if you like.

Gnospen a écrit

POP3 does NOT create a trash inside LOCAL FOLDERS. The trash is inside YOUR POP3 ACCOUNT-Folder. Local Folders has its own trash for taking care of deletes from inside Local Folders. It has nothing to do with any pop3 -account.

I've read your remark again, and I'd like to precise my word :

In the case you're centralising your POP3 accounts into one "Local Folders" section where your unique inbox, outbox, etc. are located, then this will be the one and only trash bin that will be used.

So I agree it's not directly related to the POP3 accounts, but :

- It's the one that will be used when you chose to group your accounts - It's only related to POP3 anyway, as IMAP accounts always have their own separate section.

This said, maybe I wrote something wrong when editing my first post.

Could you please confirm the "Trash" and "Trash.msf" files are always created automatically or not ?

The reason for this question is : both files are always automatically recreated by Thunderbird inside each account folder if you delete them (which is another easy way to fix the problem, BTW), but the ones that should be located inside "Local Folders" are NOT automatically recreated, even though they're the only ones you're actually using !

what do you mean when you say common trash-bin how do you set it up?

the trash- folder for a POP3-account is created locally on your PC but under the local pop3-directory

Pop3 downloads messages and put them in folder INBOX (which is a single file) If you delete a message it will be copied to TRASH in that pop3-directory and marked as (to be) deleted in the INBOX-file.

I haven't found any settings to steer a POP3 delete-copy to another trash-bin in another directory.

Hmmm...

To answer your question, I'll make some trials on another Windows user account.

As I said, my whole setup was imported from Outlook Express (it's 19 years old and was originally created in Windows 95), so Thunderbird inherited the whole scheme.

However, I know it's an option in MS Outlook you're asked about upon creating an account.

I have yet to test with Thunderbird to answer your question, but I guess you can found this inside your account settings in Thunderbird. I'll check there and be back ASAP. ^^

Edit :

If you're using POP3, would you please check inside the "Copies and folders" section in your account settings ?

All mine are setup to the same "Sent on Local Folders" / "Local Folders" / "Draft on local folders" / "Local folders" for copies, archives, draft and models, respectively.

Note :

In case you're wondering how I can work with this, the answer is my messages filters are mainly based upon the sender, not the accounts. I'm using several professional accounts (for customers service, for accounting, for providers, for monitoring backup messages from our customers servers, etc.) plus a personal account, and I'm sorting them by subjects and emitters rather than recipients.

The funny point is we also have a "contact" address from our website that we actually never use since we usually work at customer's sites, but this is the very one that's getting spammed all the time... ^^ LOL

Trash are created automatically Epmtying Trash is to delete and recreate the trash-file. Compacting is to recreate and import valid messages.

• .msf can always be deleted as it will be recreated from the file without an extension,

Inbox >> Inbox.msf Sent >> Sent.msf Trash >> Trash.msf

If you centralize (?) Do you mean View folders unified (?), you create a new directory under MAIL called Smart Mailboxes Here are another set of folders (files) Inbox, Inbox.msf, Sent, Sent.msf, Trash, Trash.msf .......

In this case the important one are the .msf as they are index files pointing to the different mail-accounts and their messages. Trash.msf in here points to all other trash-bins and the trash itself is empty. That's smart as if you change back from unified its all intact.

EDIT

Copies and folders are dealing with Sent, Archives, Drafts, Templates and NOT with Trash.

NOTE

I also started with Z80

Well, the important point is in case of unified inboxes etc. the Trash and Trash.msf files are not re-created as it happens inside accounts folders.

I just wanted to complete the usually given solutions to include this case. :)

Im not convinced. I used unified folders I deleted trash and trash.msf in a pop-account Started Thunderbird and a new trash and trash.msf was created.

I'm afraid that I am not technically compentent to understand much of what you wrote. I know how to use Thunderbird, but not its inner workings.

It turned out that Trash had been renamed Deleted in one of the new versions. Learning that sloved the problem. Thank you for your efforts. As my mind gets older I need more help, and I appreciate all of it.

Brooke