Problem with Drafts

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RDaneel
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Problem with Drafts

Post by RDaneel »

... since early MAY of 2022, they aren't being deleted automatically - as in, they just keep building up in the Drafts folder. Note that some of these had (have) large attachments on them, so this looks to be a cause of my slowly increasing profile size. :(

I have looked for settings that would control this behavior, but see nothing so far that I can change to get the old behavior.

Which was, I assume, the automatic deletion of any successfully "sent" messages? Or are drafts only actually supposed to be saved when I say to "Save as Draft"? As I don't actually know the actual logic here - or the purpose of any automatically saved drafts - I am just guessing, so I will stop now. ;)

This is my usual Windows 11 [64-bit] installation, with virtually always a Build By Bill(tm).
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DanRaisch
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Re: Problem with Drafts

Post by DanRaisch »

How is the account set up, as POP or IMAP? In SeaMonkey, the path is Edit->Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings->Server Settings->Server Type".

Moving to SeaMonkey Support as no specific bug has yet been identified here.
RDaneel
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Re: Problem with Drafts

Post by RDaneel »

Oh! I never think about this, as I ONLY use POP, so I failed to mention it.

This is my "immortal" profile, that goes back like forever and started life in Netscape Communicator... my Drafts folder has a dozen items from the early 2000s, and a handful of entries from a few years ago - but ALL explicitly saved on purpose [as Drafts].

Now, I have 50+ items starting on May 9, 2022, and NONE of these were saved by me explicitly.

Many are "dupes", in the sense of reflecting the same email as it was being authored, but at different points - so this is presumably the "normal" operation of "drafts", in that you are being protected against a system failure of some kind - but they are supposed to be invisibly created AND deleted once the email had been sent... right?
Rob_S
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Re: Problem with Drafts

Post by Rob_S »

Drafts will normally disappear if you send them while editing, and without changing the subject or the recipient. I am not aware of any recent change affecting this behavior, but there might be.

It should be possible to save a draft for repeated re-use by using the edit as new function, and assigning a new subject or recipient each time.

On the other hand, if you have drafts you no longer need just simply select them and "shift-delete" to make them disappear. Only a subsequent compact of the folder will actually reduce the file-size.

If your profile is increasing in size more than you want, you can also delete attachments from large emails, (sort by size to find them) while keeping the email itself for record.

Also check your spam and junk folders and delete what you no longer want from those.
RDaneel
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Re: Problem with Drafts

Post by RDaneel »

Thanks for the tips, Rob - all those things make sense and I already am aware of the various described techniques - but gosh was I happy when the ability to remove attachments showed up, what, maybe 10 years ago? I went through and reclaimed a LOT of space, by removing virtually any attachment larger than, say, a few 10s of KB, and storing in my filesystem. :)

On the good news front, I just installed the newest BETA build from today, and I didn't see any unexpected Drafts behavior... but since I still can't complete a full normal create-and-send email experience (see my other issue, still in the Bugs folder), it might be premature to declare this one "done". ;)
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DanRaisch
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Re: Problem with Drafts

Post by DanRaisch »

OK, try this procedure. First, backup your Profile ( http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup )

Create a new sub-folder under Local Folders. Move all of the messages currently in your Drafts folder to that new subfolder.

Confirm that you have made the recommended backup of your Profile.

Close SeaMonkey and navigate to your Profile folder. Delete both the file Drafts.msf and the file Drafts with no extension.

Restart SeaMonkey. Compose a test message and save it as a draft. You should find a new, empty Drafts folder is created. Copy any messages you MUST have in your Drafts folder from the sub-folder created above to the Drafts folder. Compact the Drafts folder after those messages are copied in.

The "Real Fix" entry in this article -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders#Real_fix also describes this process in regard to issues with the Inbox
RDaneel
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Re: Problem with Drafts RESOLVED

Post by RDaneel »

Thanks, Dan and Rob... I think we have entered "not communicating effectively" territory - which means I did a poor job of laying out my concern(s).

The "space in profile" thing was only a curiosity and "A-Ha" moment - I am for sure able to manage [email] space in my profile and even do tricky surgeries when needed - I had already deleted the unwanted items going back to May 9 in Drafts.

My ONLY actual concern is that the auto-magic management of Drafts that happens behind the scenes was broken / acting up - and by coincidence or intent, the latest BETA build may have addressed this - I am just waiting for the Office 365 SMTP issue to be fixed / disappear / whatever before I can observe a normal mail authoring and sending cycle to verify the Drafts mechanism is back to working as expected.

EDIT: I may not be quite as good at "profile surgery" as I thought... ;) - I just realized that if you ever go in and decide to "clean up" by deleting all the .MSF files (in a non-running SeaMonkey instance, of course) - you really need to go back in as soon as you re-start and at least click on each of the matching folders, which will cause a new NON-ZERO-LENGTH .MSF file to be built!

If you don't do this, and all that is there are these weird stub ZERO-LENGTH .MSFs, then things like the Drafts management mechanism may be broken, as in, they won't work as expected. ](*,)

This is most likely what actually happened, and the SM code has nothing to do with the observed weirdness... so for anyone still reading this, I consider this to be RESOLVED.

Thanks again!
Rob_S
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Re: Problem with Drafts

Post by Rob_S »

I believe deleting an msf file on a folder that has not been compacted may restore previously deleted emails when the msf is re-built.

The msf file stores the indexing and the deleted status of your emails.
RDaneel
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Re: Problem with Drafts

Post by RDaneel »

A very useful tip - and yet another cautionary tale regarding removing .MSF files. :-k

In a different reality (haven't these come up recently? ;)) where our favorite SeaMonkey actually had devs with spare bandwidth, I would suggest that whatever logic notices that a .MSF is missing and creates a zero-length "stub" which then leads to bugs like what I observed with Drafts management is itself a bug.

But I wouldn't suggest that in this reality... :wink:
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