Messages destroyed during move operation

Discussion of bugs in Mozilla Thunderbird
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aajax
Posts: 119
Joined: August 5th, 2008, 11:48 am

Messages destroyed during move operation

Post by aajax »

This morning I began an operation that I've been doing for a long time (more than a decade) with Thunderbird (TB). With that said I do it seldom. In that a year or two could go by between operations. The operation consists of moving fairly large numbers of messages from IMAP folders to Local Folders. For example, several months worth (hundreds) of messages are selected and then "Moved To" a local folder from an IMAP folder which has thousands of messages. This always worked as expected in the past but NOT this morning.

The results this morning were very strange. They did get removed from the IMAP folder. The local folder contains a good portion of the messages but then what might be characterized an even larger number of blank (i.e., no content) messages begin to appear in the local folder. When I choose to display the "Message Source" for one of these phantom messages I get nothing but the following:

Code: Select all

From - Sat May 09 10:25:18 2020
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
X-Mozilla-Keys:      
While I cannot be certain it appears as though one of these blank messages may have been created for each message that is now missing (?destroyed). All of the blank messages report a date/time that coincides with the time that the operation was undertaken.

For whatever it might be worth here is a screenshot of what TB displays when the local folder is selected. If it might be possible to salvage the emails that appear to have been destroyed by TB suggestions would be most welcome. Needless to say I see this as a major problem which causes me to be very hesitant about using the move features of TB and for that matter even continuing to use TB.
aajax
Posts: 119
Joined: August 5th, 2008, 11:48 am

Re: Messages destroyed during move operation

Post by aajax »

I can now say that the same thing happens intermittently (i.e., from time to time) when using "Copy To" rather than "Move To" but without any affect on the source files. It is then possible to return and do the same thing again and have it work correctly. In the later case (i.e., the do over) TB was closed and reopened. This suggests that the problem is caused by something other than the data being processed. Another factor that I failed to mention initially is that, so far, this has only happened on a Windows 10 system that I recently started using for TB. This would not be the only situation where a program that works great on prior versions of Windows fails on Windows 10. I still have a Windows 7 computer that I use for TB. Next time I need to do this I'll use Windows 7 instead and if it fails try to remember to update this post.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Messages destroyed during move operation

Post by DanRaisch »

Does that same issue occur if you create a new sub-folder of Local Folders and copy the messages to that location?
aajax
Posts: 119
Joined: August 5th, 2008, 11:48 am

Re: Messages destroyed during move operation

Post by aajax »

DanRaisch wrote:Does that same issue occur if you create a new sub-folder of Local Folders and copy the messages to that location?
That is precisely what I've always been doing!
aajax
Posts: 119
Joined: August 5th, 2008, 11:48 am

Re: Messages destroyed during move operation

Post by aajax »

A "Copy To" operation was performed using TB on my Windows 7 computer. More than 2100 email message were handled as expected (i.e., without problem). The episodes that produced the errors which provoked this post had between 300 and 400 messages per operation.

This certainly suggests that Windows 10 compatibility is a possible cause. Anyway, absent better information than I have now I'll stop using "Move To" and Windows 10 for this kind of procedure.
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