Can't delete messages - new information

[makaiguy]

My wife yesterday was unable to delete messages. A program exit and restart was all it took to fix it.

[greywizard]

Actually I was meaning a CLEAN reinstall, as in wipe out everything. I actually went ahead and did that. I exported all my emails from all accounts. Then I exported all my settings, extensions and passwords with MozBackup. Then uninstalled TB and wiped clean every TB folder both in \Program Files and in all the other locations in %appdata%\Thunderbird et al.
Then I reinstalled TB and reimported back all my email and settings.

It still does the same thing.

I went ahead and disabled all extensions and I was able finally to pin it down on the WebMail Yahoo extension. Whenever that one is disabled it doesn't do this anymore. I guess I'll try to bring this up to the author of the extension, even though I don't hold high hopes for a fix, since this seems to be only MY issue not a general one (otherwise it would have been reported and fixed long ago) therefore it would be much harder for the author to tell what exactly is causing this conflict.
I'll give it a try, nonetheless.

@ DanRaisch: I work only with POP accounts for all 7 mailboxes which TB manages, but 3 of them are on Yahoo (free) so I have to use the WebMail extension as well as the Yahoo extension.
Thanks for all the assistance.

@ makaiguy: I'm well aware of that "fix"; the only problem with it is that for me it holds true only for a while, somewhere between (3-40) minutes - I can't say with precision after exactly how many minutes it goes haywire since I've never actually had the patience to stay and only watch TB, several times in a row to be able to make an accurate average.

L.E.
-----
Since I'm a persistent bastard I went ahead and tinkered it a bit more.
I actually disabled all the message filtering rules for all the mail accounts in TB, and it's been a couple of hours already without that dreaded behavior.
I'm having a hunch that this may be related only to the filters on the Yahoo accounts, but I'll leave the filters off for this evening just to be on the safe side. I'll enable tomorrow only the filters for the non-Yahoo accounts and see what I get.
That way I may be able to find out if it's the extension itself that causes this or it's actually the filters on one of the Yahoo accounts which are the culprit and the extension is just an innocent victim here.

[DanRaisch]

Uninstalling and reinstalling the application has absolutely no impact on your Profile, which is where saved data such as account settings, message files, etc is stored and where most problems originate. Using MozBackup you defeated your own intentions. All you did was copy off and restore the same problem you had before doing that (supposedly) clean sweep of Thunderbird, because the problem existed in the profile (apparently in the message filters) and not in TB itself.

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy greywizard,

the yahoo free accounts can be accessed thru imap, also. here's the imap route ...
imap.mail.yahoo.com, 993, ssl/tls, normal password
smtp.mail.yahoo.com, 465, ssl/tls, normal password

that will save you the runaround that yahoo plays against the webmail extension. [*grin*]

take care,
lee

[greywizard]

@ DanRaisch : I was aware of the issue you speak about. Actually I wiped clean my profile folder. I used MozBackup to backup just my extensions, passwords and settings. The first intention was to not even restore these and just re-create every single account, with it's settings from scratch. But then I got a little overwhelmed when looking at the workload involved after installing TB on a clean slate and bringing everything back to the previous state. And I thought I'd give it a try with only restoring the account settings and extensions from MozBackup.

I suspected that this may perpetuate the problem but I wasn't sure, as I didn't know if MozBackup simply copies the necessary files from within the profile folder or it actually reads the files and extracts only the relevant info, in which case it would RECREATE the files in case of a restore, and not just copy back some possibly corrupted ones.
But I took this path anyway, since it was easier hoping to get good results.

When I didn't get good results (as mentioned above), I was disappointed and thought I had to go back and restart without restoring anything but my mails through the Import/Export extension.
Luckily I was able to catch a glance of TB receiving a mail which was moved to a subfolder of Inbox for a Yahoo account and then immediately going into "locked" mode again, which led me to the assumption that it may be the message filters that are involved here.

And in my case, I was right! I've been running now TB for the whole day, since morning, with message filters ENABLED on all the other accounts EXCEPT the Yahoo ones (which also use the WebMail Extension) with no occurrence of the above discussed issue.
So, now it comes as a pretty logical conclusion that the combination between custom message filters and the Yahoo mail extension is a faulty one, for me at the present time.

@ Lee_Dailey : Thanks man, I'll give that a try. I remember trying IMAP once before for Yahoo but with no success, but it may have been due to insufficient setup data. If it works, then I'll say goodbye to the WebMail Extension and I'll be able to enable again the filters.

[DanRaisch]

Good detective work. Glad to hear you've resolved (for the most part) your issues.

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy greywizard,

i'm also glad to hear you found the trouble point _and_ a workaround. [*grin*]

as for the yahoo imap stuff, it works for me. admittedly, my use pattern is rather simple. good luck & your "thank you" is appreciated!

take care,
lee

[UldisL]

Hi Guys,

I switched to Thunderbird when Eudora closed the shop down and I'm using it since. Currently I have Thunderbird on 3 computers (always latest versions on all 3) and since several moths on all 3 I'm experiencing all symptoms greywizard mentions. I also tried all remedies mentioned above, no success. Only, in difference to greywizard, I don't have any filters for Yahoo, nor do I myself use any online (Yahoo or whatever) accounts, the mailservers are these of 2 my ISP's and all mail is downloaded to my computers. I have deleted all attachments, I compact folders very often (if not daily), but the problem persists. Maybe it is connected with receiving mail (spam mostly) with a Yahoo extension? If so, what should I do with my filters? (I'm an "advanced user" only, not a guy daring to mess with Config Editor).

TIA for your qualified advice,

Uldis, Latvia

[UldisL]

Update: I disabled in Add-ons Manager>Plugins Yahoo! activex Plug-in Bridge. All problems still happen, but not with a frequency 10-15 minutes as before, but about every 4 hours. Go figure...

Uldis