TB invisibly adds 'email in Drafts folder' to sent email

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John_Ha
Posts: 111
Joined: August 22nd, 2008, 2:56 am

TB invisibly adds 'email in Drafts folder' to sent email

Post by John_Ha »

When I send an email, TB sometimes adds the last email (mine are sorted by date) saved in the Drafts folder to my email.

I cannot see this text in my copy of the email in my Sent folder, but the recipient sees the text. I have no idea that I have sent it.

When I look at the message source of my sent email, the text from the draft email is included in the message source as shown below. It is always the last email in the Drafts folder which is added (mine are sorted by date).

This has now happened on 4 or 5 occasions - fortunately my Draft email is nothing to be worried about. I think that where it has happened, the email I am writing has been Autosaved to the Drafts folder while I have been writing it.

Has anyone seen it before? And critically, how do I diagnose and fix it?

TB 14.0 under Windows 7 Home 64 bit.

Other funny things I have noticed include seeing multiple copies of saved emails in my Drafts folder, each timed at 2 minute intervals. I have Autosave set to 2 minutes. Also, when I forwarded an email I had previously sent, and which contained an in-line image, TB removed the in-line image and added the text from the saved email in the Draft folder.

Code: Select all

... my proper email text ...
... my signature block</pre>
        <br>
        <br>
      </div>
      <br>
      <br>
      <br>
    </div>
    <br>
  </body>
</html>

*** everything below is the last email stored in my Drafts folder ***

--------------080609090302010000040501
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-ID: <part3.02080308.09010809@example.co.uk>

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16640" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT size=2>

... text from email stored in DRAFTS folder ...
 
</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>
Last edited by John_Ha on January 16th, 2015, 8:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DanRaisch
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Joined: September 23rd, 2004, 8:57 pm
Location: Somewhere on the right coast

Re: TB invisibly adds last email in Drafts folder to sent em

Post by DanRaisch »

If you are working with a POP type account try the following 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 sub-folder.

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

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

Restart Thunderbird and you should find a new, empty Drafts folder in place. Copy any messages you MUST have in your Drafts folder from the sub-folder created above to the Drafts. 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.
John_Ha
Posts: 111
Joined: August 22nd, 2008, 2:56 am

Re: TB invisibly adds last email in Drafts folder to sent em

Post by John_Ha »

Dan
Thanks for excellent instructions. I have done that and will see if it occurs again. I specifically deleted the last email itself just in case it was somehow corrupted itself.

Minor trivia to help anyone else following the steps

1 Create a new sub-folder under Local Folders [inside TB by r-click Local folders > New folder] ...
2 Restart Thunderbird. [You will not have a Drafts folder. Edit a test email and save it - this will create the Drafts folder.] Copy ...
John_Ha
Posts: 111
Joined: August 22nd, 2008, 2:56 am

Re: TB invisibly adds last email in Drafts folder to sent em

Post by John_Ha »

It has happened again. TB has added an email from my drafts folder to an email I sent. This time, the added email was not the last email in the Drafts folder. My sent copy does not display the added text, but it is visible in View > Message source. Searching on unique words in the added text does not find the "sent email" - it appears that TB only searches the displayed text.

The proper email was saved in the Drafts folder during editing it, so the corruption presumably happened then.

This is a very bad security exposure, especially as the copy of the sent email does not display the wrongly added text so I have no idea it has happened until the recipient mentions it.

Shall I raise a bug report? It is a very bad fault.

[Edited to correct details and add the following]

I have again re-created my Drafts folder, this time by
1 Drag each email out of Drafts into a folder on the PC. The emails are stored as eml files.
2 Close TB, navigate to the profile files, delete the Drafts and Drafts.msf folders.
3 Start TB, edit a test email, save it. This creates a new Drafts folder
4 Drag the eml files back into the new Drafts folder.
Last edited by John_Ha on October 9th, 2012, 1:49 am, edited 2 times in total.
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DanRaisch
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Joined: September 23rd, 2004, 8:57 pm
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Re: TB invisibly adds last email in Drafts folder to sent em

Post by DanRaisch »

Sorry to hear that. This is the report of this issue I have ever seen on the forums. You should raise a bug report.
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DanRaisch
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Posts: 127246
Joined: September 23rd, 2004, 8:57 pm
Location: Somewhere on the right coast

Re: TB invisibly adds 'email in Drafts folder' to sent email

Post by DanRaisch »

Thank you for the update.
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