Have I exceeded the limits of Thunderbird?

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nkmoller
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Have I exceeded the limits of Thunderbird?

Post by nkmoller »

I am - what I will call - a heavy user of Thunderbird. Currently when starting Thunderbird it opens 16 different accounts, all IMAP. For each account I have message filters placing incoming mail in dedicated folders, up to 30 folders for some accounts. The current total number of messages in all accounts has just passed 171600. This has been working fine until recently. Each time there is a new message in a folder the account name turns blue and the folder name turns blue and bold and the number of unread messages is shown in brackets. When opening a bold blue folder the folder name and number of unreads turns black but is still bold as long as there are unread messages.

I guess this is how it is supposed to act and react. But in the last weeks I have observed folders with new messages not turning bold and blue. Often the number of unreads in brackets does not show until I scroll down the folder names.

The Development Team(?) have introduced a "star function" marking accounts containing new unread messages with a yellow star. I have seen accounts with the star but with no bold folder names indicating new messages. It looks to me as if they have set a maximum number of searches for new messages in a maximum number of folders and that those maximum values are too low.

I have experienced this both on my old PC with Windows 7 and the new one with Windows 11. I have always immediately installed new updates on both when they arrive.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Have I exceeded the limits of Thunderbird?

Post by DanRaisch »

I have always immediately installed new updates on both when they arrive.
But you don't say what version you are now running. What version is that?
For each account I have message filters placing incoming mail in dedicated folders, up to 30 folders for some accounts.
Where are those destination folders located? Are they within the IMAP account structure or in a sub-folder of the Local Folders structure?

Moving to Thunderbird Support.
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nkmoller
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Re: Have I exceeded the limits of Thunderbird?

Post by nkmoller »

Thunderbird 91.5.1 (64 bit) "You are currently on the release update channel."
All accounts are IMAP accounts. All folders are within the IMAP account structure.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Have I exceeded the limits of Thunderbird?

Post by DanRaisch »

Try compacting the folders to force Thunderbird to rebuild the message summary files (indexes) -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_: ... ng_Folders
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nkmoller
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Re: Have I exceeded the limits of Thunderbird?

Post by nkmoller »

Thanks, I will but not right now. Time is running and I have to attend something else. I will report back when I have tried it.
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nkmoller
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Re: Have I exceeded the limits of Thunderbird?

Post by nkmoller »

Yesterday I went through all my accounts activating "Clean up ("Expunge") Inbox on Exit" and "Empty Trash on Exit" before closing Thunderbird and shutting down both machines. This morning things are looking better bearing in mind this is a Sunday morning with not many incoming mails. The real test will be tomorrow.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Have I exceeded the limits of Thunderbird?

Post by tanstaafl »

"The current total number of messages in all accounts has just passed 171600. "

I'm not aware of a limit on the total number of messages. "The number of messages in a folder is limited to 4 billion (2^32 in a 32bit counter)". If there was one I suspect it would only effect global search and saved search (virtual folder).

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Limits_-_Thunderbird

I haven't found any documentation about the star feature. But it used to be that you needed to check the checkmark "when getting new messages for this account always check this folder" in the folders properties (unless it was a "special" folder such as the inbox) to have it check for new mail. That feature is only for IMAP accounts and works reliably on my PC with the folder listing set to "all folders". One reason I don't use "Unified Folders" is that view is fragile. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Unified_Folders_not_working

You might find http://kb.mozillazine.org/Deleting_mess ... P_accounts and http://kb.mozillazine.org/Entire_messag ... AP_message worth reading (not directly related to your problems) . I like to set mail.imap.expunge_option to 2 so that Thunderbird automatically expunges all deleted messages when there are 20 of them (total).
crenelle
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Re: Have I exceeded the limits of Thunderbird?

Post by crenelle »

I do all the filter triage on the server-side into about 200 mailboxes. At the time, Thunderbird was having trouble processing inbound email, and having the server handle triage stabilized the whole deal. I was switching from Eudora to Thunderbird, so this was a while ago.
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nkmoller
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Re: Have I exceeded the limits of Thunderbird?

Post by nkmoller »

I still experience this problem but may be not as frequent as before. But still account names turn blue with a yellow small circular symbol together indicating new mail, but when opening the account no folders indicate new mail. There is in fact new mail, found by scrolling down the folder list. I have a feeling this is not happending as frequent as when I started this thread so if anybody made adjustments to the software please do more of that.
wsmwk
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Re: Have I exceeded the limits of Thunderbird?

Post by wsmwk »

This type of issue is mainly a code architecture issue whereby the necessary information already in the folder state in the backend isn't properly bubbling up to the UI. So a) repairs and the like are never going to be a solution, b) we are not going to see reliable UI improvement until the next major version ships with code architecture fixes which are in progress.
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