Blank Emails....help

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petey57
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Joined: February 1st, 2006, 12:14 pm

Blank Emails....help

Post by petey57 »

ok over the last week or so some of my emails are coming in completely blank, i have tried to repair and deleted the folder msf file but i still have the problem, any help would be appreciated.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Blank Emails....help

Post by DanRaisch »

* Which version of Thunderbird? Check Help>About for the version number.
* What kind of mail - POP, IMAP?
* Is your mail service from an ISP, corporate e-mail system or Web-based?
* Are you using an antivirus and/or a firewall program? Which ones?
* Do you regularly compact your folders or just because of this problem?
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makaiguy
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Re: Blank Emails....help

Post by makaiguy »

First - do you know these really aren't blank emails? Some spam mails really do not have any visible text.

View the message source via View | Message Source (or just press Ctrl+U).
Doug Wilson
Win10 64bit: FF 115.0.02 64bit, TB 102.12.0 32-bit ║ Android 13/10: FF 115.2.0/115.0.1 ║ No TB for Android available, dammit!
What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away - Doobie Brothers
petey57
Posts: 16
Joined: February 1st, 2006, 12:14 pm

Re: Blank Emails....help

Post by petey57 »

DanRaisch wrote:* Which version of Thunderbird? Check Help>About for the version number.
* What kind of mail - POP, IMAP?
* Is your mail service from an ISP, corporate e-mail system or Web-based?
* Are you using an antivirus and/or a firewall program? Which ones?
* Do you regularly compact your folders or just because of this problem?


thunderbird version 11.0
pop email accounts
isp provider
Antivirus used is Bull Guard
Folders are regularly compacted

i have approx 10 accounts setup, some with different isp providers but all accounts seem to have the problem
petey57
Posts: 16
Joined: February 1st, 2006, 12:14 pm

Re: Blank Emails....help

Post by petey57 »

makaiguy wrote:First - do you know these really aren't blank emails? Some spam mails really do not have any visible text.

View the message source via View | Message Source (or just press Ctrl+U).


These are not spam as i have sent emails to check this and they still come in blank, i have checked the source of one of the email and have pasted it below.

From - Wed Mar 28 10:09:40 2012
X-Account-Key: account14
X-UIDL: UID13160-1245606143
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
X-Mozilla-Keys:
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DanRaisch
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Re: Blank Emails....help

Post by DanRaisch »

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 Inbox to that new subfolder.

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

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

Restart Thunderbird and you should find a new, empty Inbox folder in place. Copy any messages you MUST have in your Inbox from the sub-folder created above to the Inbox. Compact the Inbox 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.
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makaiguy
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Re: Blank Emails....help

Post by makaiguy »

petey57 wrote:These are not spam as i have sent emails to check this and they still come in blank, i have checked the source of one of the email and have pasted it below.

From - Wed Mar 28 10:09:40 2012
X-Account-Key: account14
X-UIDL: UID13160-1245606143
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
X-Mozilla-Keys:


I assume these are only a few of the headers from the top of the message? If that is truly the entire message source, then there is no text to show (nor a From field, To field or Subject field). You might want to view the actual message files in a text editor to see if that's all there is to the message.
Exit TBird, go to your profile, open the Mail subfolder, and then open the subfolder under that for your email account.
  • If you need help finding your profile files, see Where is my Profile Folder. Windows users be sure to read the part about revealing hidden files and not hiding file extensions.
Find the message file for the mail folder in question (file with same name as message folder displayed in TBird, with no filename extension, so the file for your Inbox would just be called "Inbox"). For safety's sake make a backup copy of this file so you can restore it later if you make a mistake. Now open the file in a plain text editor.
  • Do NOT use a word processor like MSWord.
  • Windows NotePad will work for smaller files that it can load
  • Windows WordPad can handle larger files.
You should be able to see the content of the file and scroll up/down from message to message. A text search for UID13160-1245606143 should take you to that particular message.
Doug Wilson
Win10 64bit: FF 115.0.02 64bit, TB 102.12.0 32-bit ║ Android 13/10: FF 115.2.0/115.0.1 ║ No TB for Android available, dammit!
What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away - Doobie Brothers
seanje
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Joined: May 27th, 2012, 12:16 am

Re: Blank Emails....help

Post by seanje »

Did anyone find a solution for this? I am seeing the same problem.

Windows 7
Thunderbird 12.0.1
ISP email (but seems to be using gmail underneath some customisation)
POP3 access from Thunderbird
BullGuard AV
Don't regularly compact my email

Importantly, I can see the emails fine if I use the alternative web interface to the account.

Note that it is only some emails that are blank - others are fine. Viewing the source of the blank emails gives similar results to the OP - none of the email appears to have been downloaded.

I have not been able to identify a pattern to which emails come through blank. Two virtually identical emails from our gas supplier were sent at roughly the same time and only one came through blank. I believe that each blank email corresponds to an email that has not been downloaded but I am not 100% sure (since I have been doing some experimentation with the account while investigating the issue, which may have messed up the numbers).

Cheers,
Sean
seanje
Posts: 10
Joined: May 27th, 2012, 12:16 am

Re: Blank Emails....help

Post by seanje »

PS - deleting the inbox files and getting all of the email again did not help. All of my email is downloading again but with many blank emails. I may resort to re-installing but it would be better to understand why this is happening.
seanje
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Joined: May 27th, 2012, 12:16 am

Re: Blank Emails....help

Post by seanje »

PPS - Problem still happens with add-ons disabled.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Blank Emails....help

Post by tanstaafl »

"Viewing the source of the blank emails gives similar results to the OP - none of the email appears to have been downloaded."

Does the corresponding entry in the folder listing have no subject, no From address and a 1969 date?

I can't find any recent threads about this problem on the official support site, but thier search support is terrible so its possible I might have missed some. The most useful ones I found were:

https://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_mes ... ome_emails mentions somebody using Exchange who had that problem because of a rule that fixed an attachment problem with Lotus Notes, but had as a side effect deleting the message body .
https://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_mes ... ages-3jqim
https://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_mes ... hunderbird
seanje
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Joined: May 27th, 2012, 12:16 am

Re: Blank Emails....help

Post by seanje »

tanstaafl wrote:"Does the corresponding entry in the folder listing have no subject, no From address and a 1969 date?"


The subject and from fields are empty but Thunderbird has assigned a time and date that match the time when it attempted to download the message.

Thanks for the links - I'll take a look and see whether there is anything useful there.

Cheers,
Sean
seanje
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Joined: May 27th, 2012, 12:16 am

Re: Blank Emails....help

Post by seanje »

The first link looks like a different issue. However, there are posts in the other two threads that look like the same problem that I am seeing. Sadly, no-one seems to have a solution yet.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Blank Emails....help

Post by tanstaafl »

"The subject and from fields are empty but Thunderbird has assigned a time and date that match the time when it attempted to download the message."

If there is no Date: header it should default to 1969 (earliest possible date - you see this when corruption causes message fragments for example).
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makaiguy
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Re: Blank Emails....help

Post by makaiguy »

tanstaafl wrote:If there is no Date: header it should default to 1969 (earliest possible date - you see this when corruption causes message fragments for example).

Actually,it will default to midnight at the beginning of Jan 1, 1970 Greenwich Mean Time (basically London Standard Time). The actual date and time displayed for YOU will depend on how many time zones east or west of London you're located. For those of us in North America, this will be some time in the evening of Dec 31, 1969.
Doug Wilson
Win10 64bit: FF 115.0.02 64bit, TB 102.12.0 32-bit ║ Android 13/10: FF 115.2.0/115.0.1 ║ No TB for Android available, dammit!
What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away - Doobie Brothers
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