Here's a new one, at least for me. I can't move, copy or delete more than one email at a time. I CAN do each of these operations on individual emails. This problem applies not just to my Inbox, but to ALL folders, both the default ones and the ones I have created. When I try to operate on multiple emails, I get the following error message:
“The messages could not be moved or copied to folder 'IB Archive Test Folder on Local Folders' because writing to folder failed. To gain disk space, from the File menu, first choose Empty Trash, and then choose Compact Folders, and then try again.”
I have been using Tbird for 24 years, have 50 gigs in archived folders, and 10 inbound email addresses. I routinely compact my Inbox, and archive messages from it periodically when it gets above 3-4 gigs in size. It is currently 4 gigs. I am running Tbird on Windows.
I have tried all the usual fixes: compact all folders one at a time, use the Tbird Repair function on the Inbox, empty the Trash and compact it, delete the Inbox .msf and allow Tbird to regenerate it, even copy the Inbox to an outboard location then delete it restart Tbird and have Tbird regen an empty Inbox. None of these has worked.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thx.
Can’t move, copy or delete more than one email at a time
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Lightguide
- Posts: 3
- Joined: September 24th, 2010, 1:41 pm
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tanstaafl
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Re: Can’t move, copy or delete more than one email at a time
How much free space do you have on your boot drive?
Unlikely to be the culprit, but it wouldn't hurt to have windows explorer check for hard disk errors.
Unlikely to be the culprit but how much free memory do you have when this occurs? You can check that with task manager. If you have too many large applications loaded at the same time your PC can thrash as it loads images between the swap file and memory. Normally that would just make things slow to a crawl but it can also cause problems.
Is this problem occurring with messages that don't have any attachments?
Its possible Thunderbird is displaying the wrong error message. See if the problem still occurs if you use help -> troubleshoot mode to temporarily disable all add-ons, JIT, hardware acceleration etc. This is what used to be called safe mode.
Did this problem occur shortly after a upgrade from 91 to 102 or did it just occur out of the blue?
Unlikely to be the culprit, but it wouldn't hurt to have windows explorer check for hard disk errors.
Unlikely to be the culprit but how much free memory do you have when this occurs? You can check that with task manager. If you have too many large applications loaded at the same time your PC can thrash as it loads images between the swap file and memory. Normally that would just make things slow to a crawl but it can also cause problems.
Is this problem occurring with messages that don't have any attachments?
Its possible Thunderbird is displaying the wrong error message. See if the problem still occurs if you use help -> troubleshoot mode to temporarily disable all add-ons, JIT, hardware acceleration etc. This is what used to be called safe mode.
Did this problem occur shortly after a upgrade from 91 to 102 or did it just occur out of the blue?
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Lightguide
- Posts: 3
- Joined: September 24th, 2010, 1:41 pm
Re: Can’t move, copy or delete more than one email at a time
Re the last question: I have TB set to auto update, so not sure when it went to 102 (it's about to go to 105). The posted problem just started yesterday. I will try the troubleshoot/safe mode approach, and report results.
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Lightguide
- Posts: 3
- Joined: September 24th, 2010, 1:41 pm
Re: Can’t move, copy or delete more than one email at a time
tanstaafl ( do I sense the presence of a Heinlein fan?), Please see my responses inline after your points:
How much free space do you have on your boot drive? My OS is on a separate partition from my data. I moved some stuff around, and my boot drive is now 150 GB, with 30GB free space.
Unlikely to be the culprit, but it wouldn't hurt to have windows explorer check for hard disk errors. Done, no errors.
Unlikely to be the culprit but how much free memory do you have when this occurs? You can check that with task manager. If you have too many large applications loaded at the same time your PC can thrash as it loads images between the swap file and memory. Normally that would just make things slow to a crawl but it can also cause problems. I have made sure that only Tbird is running, and have at least 50% free memory at all times, but still no joy.
Is this problem occurring with messages that don't have any attachments? Yes.
Its possible Thunderbird is displaying the wrong error message. See if the problem still occurs if you use help -> troubleshoot mode to temporarily disable all add-ons, JIT, hardware acceleration etc. This is what used to be called safe mode. Tried this, but no joy.
Did this problem occur shortly after a upgrade from 91 to 102 or did it just occur out of the blue? Ignore my last comment about v105--that's Firefox not TBird. I am running v102.3.0 of TBird. i checked the release date of v102: September 20 to regular channels. This date is AWFULLY close to the time I began to experience this problem--maybe only a couple of days or less. Given that I have autoupdate enabled, I would have likely updated on 9/20 or 9/21. Do you think something in the update would have broken my ability to operate on multiple messages? If so, what? And can I downgrade to a previous version to check? If so, how?
So nothing has worked yet, and I still have the serious problem I described initially. Putting aside the possibility that something in v102 is the problem, I has another idea. I use CrashPlan on this PC, which backs up realtime, and keeps versions for a period of time. What would you think about going back a week or two in the CrashPlan backups, grabbing my vintage TBird profile, and overwriting it over my current profile? BTW, I have a named profile, not the default user profile, and all my email folders are under a Local Folders folder on a separate data partition, so I could do this and not affect my folder data.
How much free space do you have on your boot drive? My OS is on a separate partition from my data. I moved some stuff around, and my boot drive is now 150 GB, with 30GB free space.
Unlikely to be the culprit, but it wouldn't hurt to have windows explorer check for hard disk errors. Done, no errors.
Unlikely to be the culprit but how much free memory do you have when this occurs? You can check that with task manager. If you have too many large applications loaded at the same time your PC can thrash as it loads images between the swap file and memory. Normally that would just make things slow to a crawl but it can also cause problems. I have made sure that only Tbird is running, and have at least 50% free memory at all times, but still no joy.
Is this problem occurring with messages that don't have any attachments? Yes.
Its possible Thunderbird is displaying the wrong error message. See if the problem still occurs if you use help -> troubleshoot mode to temporarily disable all add-ons, JIT, hardware acceleration etc. This is what used to be called safe mode. Tried this, but no joy.
Did this problem occur shortly after a upgrade from 91 to 102 or did it just occur out of the blue? Ignore my last comment about v105--that's Firefox not TBird. I am running v102.3.0 of TBird. i checked the release date of v102: September 20 to regular channels. This date is AWFULLY close to the time I began to experience this problem--maybe only a couple of days or less. Given that I have autoupdate enabled, I would have likely updated on 9/20 or 9/21. Do you think something in the update would have broken my ability to operate on multiple messages? If so, what? And can I downgrade to a previous version to check? If so, how?
So nothing has worked yet, and I still have the serious problem I described initially. Putting aside the possibility that something in v102 is the problem, I has another idea. I use CrashPlan on this PC, which backs up realtime, and keeps versions for a period of time. What would you think about going back a week or two in the CrashPlan backups, grabbing my vintage TBird profile, and overwriting it over my current profile? BTW, I have a named profile, not the default user profile, and all my email folders are under a Local Folders folder on a separate data partition, so I could do this and not affect my folder data.
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tanstaafl
- Moderator
- Posts: 49647
- Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm
Re: Can’t move, copy or delete more than one email at a time
I'm a Robert Heinlein fan 
Copying an old version of the profile over the existing one is worth a try.
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/ ... n64/en-US/ has the windows 64 bit english-usa setup program for version 91.13.0 . If you want to try going back to the older version install it over your existing installation to avoid problems due to the dedicated profile per installation feature.
Thunderbird 91.* will detect that some files were modified for future releases and will probably claim that it can't use the existing profile. Add a --allow-downgrade command line argument to the shortcut BEFORE you run the older version. That tells it to ignore differences in the profile leftover from the newer version.
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" --allow-downgrade
If that doesn't work to avoid it complaining that the profile isn't compatible go to help -> more troubleshooting information , click on the about:profiles link and use the set as default profile button to make your profile the default profile again.
Copying an old version of the profile over the existing one is worth a try.
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/ ... n64/en-US/ has the windows 64 bit english-usa setup program for version 91.13.0 . If you want to try going back to the older version install it over your existing installation to avoid problems due to the dedicated profile per installation feature.
Thunderbird 91.* will detect that some files were modified for future releases and will probably claim that it can't use the existing profile. Add a --allow-downgrade command line argument to the shortcut BEFORE you run the older version. That tells it to ignore differences in the profile leftover from the newer version.
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" --allow-downgrade
If that doesn't work to avoid it complaining that the profile isn't compatible go to help -> more troubleshooting information , click on the about:profiles link and use the set as default profile button to make your profile the default profile again.