Unable to write the email to the mailbox

Discussion of bugs in Mozilla Thunderbird
Chanc2g
Posts: 6
Joined: November 15th, 2004, 10:22 pm

Totally new to this...need a quick fix

Post by Chanc2g »

I've been using NETSCAPE 7x for quite a while now...have always used Netscape Browser and mail client. Just today, suddenly got that "Cannot write email to the mailbox, etc..."

I've emptied my trash folder...have emptied my mail server (sbc.yahoo) online...but still cannot get my Netscape mail client (Thunderbird??) to retrieve/write the emails...it will notify me of mail...and it will send, just find...

Is there something that I'm missing? Can anyone offer some insights, ASAP???

Thanks,
Fred
rgathercoal
Posts: 18
Joined: November 8th, 2004, 10:20 am
Location: Newberg, Oregon. Pacific Northwest, US

another follow up

Post by rgathercoal »

Another interesting (I hope) thing: It only affects one email account. I had two separate email accounts (from two servers) both coming into Thunderbird. The one account works just fine. The second account is the one that stopped up.

I went to the web server/mail server for the offending account. The messages were gone from there (having been deleted when they were sent to Thunderbird). There are two suspect messages in Thunderbird.

I say "suspect" because for some reason Thunderbird won't let me delete them. When I try to delete either message the computer stops and thinks for quite awhile, and then does nothing. No message, no error message, no delete--the messages are still there.

Gave up on the problem and set up my second email to forward to the first account. But if this happens on this account as well, I'm out of Thunderbird land. Don't want that!

Is there some way to delete a mail message without being in Thunderbird (i.e., from windows)? I haven't tried yet because I remember horror stories of people who did this sort of thing and ended up with headers not matching messages or something equally as cruel.

This seems like it could be a serious problem. Is there a solution?

Roy Gathercoal
father, husband, postmodern, evangelical, Quaker academic, social service practitioner, medieval recreationist, organizational communication researcher and theorist. . .
mzkellz
Posts: 3
Joined: November 15th, 2004, 12:55 am

Post by mzkellz »

Its happening to me too. I have been able to download my email on someone elses computer who uses Thunderbird, but not mine.
I am so disapointed, because I had just started getting use to it. I hope someone can give me an answer.
Thank you :)
Shimodax
Posts: 2
Joined: November 18th, 2004, 3:07 pm

Post by Shimodax »

Any news on this yet?

Mark
American Finn
Posts: 555
Joined: September 25th, 2003, 2:16 am

Re: another follow up

Post by American Finn »

rgathercoal wrote:I say "suspect" because for some reason Thunderbird won't let me delete them. When I try to delete either message the computer stops and thinks for quite awhile, and then does nothing. No message, no error message, no delete--the messages are still there.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?t ... ng_Folders
American Finn
Posts: 555
Joined: September 25th, 2003, 2:16 am

Post by American Finn »

mzkellz wrote:Its happening to me too. I have been able to download my email on someone elses computer who uses Thunderbird, but not mine.
I am so disapointed, because I had just started getting use to it. I hope someone can give me an answer.
Thank you :)

Do you know which email is causing the problem?

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=166111
Each time I tried to "Get New Mail" just one message would come down (always
the same one) and I'd get the Alert message "Unable to write the email to the
mailbox. Make sure the file system allows you write priveleges, and you have
enough disk space to copy the mailbox." Once I manually deleted the message
from the POP3 server, everything was fine again.

have you tried this?:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?t ... ng_Folders

http://sillydog.org/forum/viewtopic.php ... 89f9#37845
.
Tadiera
Posts: 1
Joined: December 16th, 2004, 12:14 pm
Location: Cincinnati, OH
Contact:

Post by Tadiera »

Okay, I know I likely speak for many people when I say: WTF?

I read through this thread and saw, back from around... build 0.4? was it? that this bug had been fixed with the most recent build.
Well, I'm using 1.0 and I just got this bug this morning.
And in the past 2 days, I'd only sent one email. I checked said email. It had no dot . on a single line or anything. All periods were precisely where they should be: at the end of a sentence.

I really think there should be more attention to this issue then 'Upgrade'. I have 1.0 on WinXP, service pack 2.
usasma
Posts: 11
Joined: July 8th, 2004, 4:47 am
Location: at home

Post by usasma »

I just talked my son into trying TBird 1.0, and 3 days later he got hit by this bug. I'll echo iera's comment . . . WTF?
rgathercoal
Posts: 18
Joined: November 8th, 2004, 10:20 am
Location: Newberg, Oregon. Pacific Northwest, US

Post by rgathercoal »

Is anyone reading these posts? Is some developer working on this, or are we all slipping through the cracks?

Surely there are enough different people who have posted to write us all off as idiots or crybabies. . .

There seems to be a real glitch here, that isn't fixed with the simple deletion of a single message, or by updating to the newest release. . .

Roy Gathercoal
father, husband, postmodern, evangelical, Quaker academic, social service practitioner, medieval recreationist, organizational communication researcher and theorist. . .
American Finn
Posts: 555
Joined: September 25th, 2003, 2:16 am

Post by American Finn »

Most people helping on this and the other forums are not developers, just normal users with usually more than normal amounts of expertise and friendliness, albeit often expressed more in terms of helpfulness than graciousness or refined manners. If not many people have tried to help, it could be that they either couldn't help, or didn't have the time, or didn't answer to refrain from acting rudely or brusquely because that's the reaction the posts may have inspired in them...

They and the developers put in a lot of personal time trying to help others. It's impossible to help everyone, so efforts are concentrated on people with common problems, both those easy to solve (usually by pointing people to the knowledge base etc.) and those without a solution so far. If your problem hasn't received a lot of response, it's probably not a common one, irrespective of whether there is a known solution or not.

Try to remember that this is a free product, not a commercial product's support forum, most of which are not visited by developers at all... In any case, it's always good manners and a smart way to prevent turning off helpful souls by thanking for help and any response offered instead of bitching around that the suggestions may not have helped...

If you want to get the equivalent of a commercial product's support, try the MozSource Support link there -->

Another very real possibility is that the problems have been badly i.e. inadequately described so that people don't know how to help and that other posters have added other inadequate descriptions of perhaps even completely different problems without them or the original poster noticing...

"suddenly got": when, while doing what?

"cannot get my Netscape mail client (Thunderbird??) to retrieve/write the emails...it will notify me of mail...and it will send, just find":
"it will notify me of mail": when doing what? does the/any mail come? is "automatically download new messages" checked?
"it will send, just find": ?

"Its happening to me too."

Yes, this is still a developing, just born product. New and old bugs can (re)surface. The easiest solution is probably uninstalling and reinstalling since most users are not experiencing this. Sometimes it's necessary to downgrade if a bug has not been fixed yet. Other possible causes of problems are antivirus programs and firewalls. Try disabling temporarily to see if TB then works.

Let's all remember this is a community effort and behave accordingly...
rgathercoal
Posts: 18
Joined: November 8th, 2004, 10:20 am
Location: Newberg, Oregon. Pacific Northwest, US

Post by rgathercoal »

I'm sorry that my post sounded to you like "bitching around," American Finn. I am fully aware that this is an opensource product, and that it has some bugs. I also know that many of those involved in helping develop this product have made claims that Thunderbird isn't just a product for programmers, that there are fora available from which you can get answers to common problems.

In my first post on this topic, November 15th, I tried to offer specific information that could help someone who knew the program to tell me what I had done wrong. I'm sorry that my second post, 1 1/2 months later, sounded to you like I was a demanding, unthoughtful, ingrate.

I have installed, reinstalled, uninstalled, installed later versions, disabled everything else on my computer, etc. all before I posted the first time. And it seems that only one of my three email accounts are affected. Because I cannot function as I need to, without reliable email, I worked around the problem by contacting the ISP and having them send the email through an alias that sends it through as another email address. That seems to have fixed the problem for now, although I do have to pay for additional email addresses. Seems bizarre, at best.

I had intended only to ask if someone associated with product development actually read these posts, or if perhaps I didn't understand "the system" well enough to be asking the right questions in the right place.

In rereading my post, I can see how someone might read it to imply that I was complaining rather than asking if this was the right place to post these questions. My "idiots and crybabies" phrase was taken from a private email response to a friend of mine who had asked what he thought was a simple and straightforward question. The respondent told him that most of the people who posted asking for help on open source software were idiots and crybabies--that if they really wanted something that would work, they should buy it from Microsoft, or learn to program themselves.

I have learned my lesson. I do sincerely regret that I offended anyone. I guess I'm not enough of an "insider" to understand how this entire process works, and whether there is a place for a user who is not a programmer. . .

At least you can give me credit for owning up to my mistakes, and for posting with my real name--I don't believe in anonymity when I'm asking someone for help. It just seems more honest to me. (Yet I also understand that others see it differently, and I'm not saying that everyone should use their real names or avoid using aliases. . . just explaining why I am using my real name.

I do appreciate the products being developed in open source. I now understand that this product isn't ready for use by those who rely on email, and who are not themselves programmers. I'm sorry for my misunderstanding. I will discontinue recommending it to those who are not programmers. I should have known better.

Roy Gathercoal
503.537.1162
royg@coho.net (the email address that needs to be re-aliased)
father, husband, postmodern, evangelical, Quaker academic, social service practitioner, medieval recreationist, organizational communication researcher and theorist. . .
American Finn
Posts: 555
Joined: September 25th, 2003, 2:16 am

Post by American Finn »

Sorry, Roy, that my post sounded like my criticism was addressed mainly at you; i should have specifically said i also meant the other posters with their much more childish and ruder posts, and i now also see that you didn't mean your post they way it looked.

Thunderbird is definitely meant for normal users, not only programmers. People with problems with Outlook Express have a much harder time getting help, or they end up paying through the nose to MS support.

Also, i'm sure you did nothing wrong. There is apparently a problem with the way Thunderbird deals with some emails with certain characteristics that are strange or in violation of international email standards.

It could however very well be that there is an easy solution to your problem, but i'm not sure i or other normal users will find it or that others more experienced will be reading this discussion during these vacation weeks. If no one comes up with new suggestions for more than a week after New Year, just bump this back to the first page with a friendly "anybody have any ideas yet?", and i'm sure you will not be left alone with your problem. However, contrary to what you say, this is no doubt a rare problem; otherwise, there would be many other threads with this topic and the developers would have fixed the bug or someone would have shown the easy solution/ fix/ workaround.

So, i'll take some more stabs at helping, but these are not more than educated guesses. Since the problem was not solved by reinstalling the program itself, the problem is apparently in the profile folder, which is not deleted or recreated when you reinstall. First make a backup copy of your profile though.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?t ... _Restoring

Have you looked through these?
http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?title=Thunderbird

Have you tried deleting the msf files in your profile?
http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?t ... aring_mail

How about deleting popstate.dat?
http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?t ... s_Received

Some have reported that turning on "download headers only" eliminates the error message.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=166111
Have you read this bug report?
The developers are actively working on this problem and say that they need useful logs. (If you don't know how to make one, ask there or here.)

Have you tried compacting?
http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?t ... ng_Folders

How big are your mail folders? If the one with a problem is very big, have you tried deleting unnecessary emails with large attachments?

You asked:
Is there some way to delete a mail message without being in Thunderbird (i.e., from windows)? I haven't tried yet because I remember horror stories of people who did this sort of thing and ended up with headers not matching messages or something equally as cruel.

If you make a backup copy of your mail folder, you can try doing the following without any risk: open the appropriate Inbox file with Notepad, delete the message you want to get rid of, delete the file Inbox.msf, and restart TB.

If it goes wrong, just delete the mail folder or the whole profile and replace it with the appropriate backup:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?t ... _Restoring

Whoever said that nonsense about people who ask for help on open source forums either has no idea what open source is about or owns MS stocks and is afraid their value will collapse soon; people who ask for help on open source forums know much more and are much less childish than average users, and any open source program older than a few years works better than any MS program.

And if someone is in a hurry and willing to pay, they can get a service even better than a commercial product's support by clicking the MozSource Support link http://support.mozsource.com/?r=mozillazine over there -->
.
rgathercoal
Posts: 18
Joined: November 8th, 2004, 10:20 am
Location: Newberg, Oregon. Pacific Northwest, US

Post by rgathercoal »

Thank you. I've tried many of these (such as compacting folders--it's weird that you have to compact deleted files. . .) . I will go through each of the other suggestions one by one to see if this works.

My comments about many people having a similar problem came from the number of "me too" posts to this original. I would be amazed if everyone who had this problem came to this particular forum, so it is reasonable to expect that there are far many more folks with this problem than have posted here. I would suggest that most people who run into this sort of problem with their mail would lose confidence and go back to the probably inferior MS products.

Perhaps whoever is coordinating this rolling out (and someone needs to be talking to the reviewers--they're far too busy and/or lazy to go surfing to find software they haven't yet heard of ) needs to consider that unlike many of the other opensource products, those dealing with email bring with them additional expectations of safety not present in other programs. . .

Thanks for your responses.

Roy
gdorrk
Posts: 6
Joined: February 7th, 2004, 12:19 pm

I fixed this.

Post by gdorrk »

This same problem plagued me this morning, and I spent several hours trying to fix it so I could receive mail at my primary account (a second account worked fine).

Here's how I finally fixed it:

I browsed into the application data folder for Thunderbird, into the profile folder, and then into the folder for the problem account.

(A path like this:
C:\Documents and Settings\<USER NAME>\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\default\<PROFILE>.slt\Mail\<ACCOUNT FOLDER> )

I noticed that there was a file (not the folder of the same name) in that folder called, simply "Inbox" with no file extension. That file was over 2 Gigbytes. So I backed up my profile folder, shut down Thunderbird, and then deleted that Inbox file.

Sure enough, when I restarted Thunderbird, a new small Inbox file was created and I could receive mail.

Before you try this, let me make this warning: I do not keep any mail in the inbox so there was little risk of me losing mail by attempting this (that's also how I knew that the 2 gig file size was way off). If you keep mail in your inbox, you may want to move it before trying this.

But it fixed the problem. All is well. Hope it works for you.
rgathercoal
Posts: 18
Joined: November 8th, 2004, 10:20 am
Location: Newberg, Oregon. Pacific Northwest, US

Post by rgathercoal »

This looks like the culprit! Mine was only 30 meg, but the inbox file for my other account (the one I'm using most of the time, now) is less than 3k. . .

And the system wouldn't let me delete the file directly. I had to manually change the file attributes, then delete the folder.

I hope this fixes the problem. Anyone else still have this problem after trying this fix?

Thanks again, gdorrk!,

Roy
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