Error truncating inbox

[jsm555]

Tonight I've received the following message on several occasions: "There was an error truncating the inbox after filtering a message to [foldername]," along with a suggestion that I shut down TB and delete the inbox.msf file. I'm not too keen on deleting files, so I didn't do that, but the net result was that there were about 6-8 messages left in my inbox that had should have been moved to appropriate folders (specified by the message filters). When I checked those folders, I found duplicate copies, as if the messages had been moved but not removed from the inbox.

I'm a little paranoid about losing email, having read so many horror stories about that occurrence in this forum. Is this error something that I should be concerned with, or is it a "normal" thing for TB? I'm running TB 1.5, compacting folders several times a day -

Thanks,
steve

[tanstaafl]

I've never heard of that error message before. The messages for your inbox folder are in "inbox.", not "inbox.msf". Deleting a .msf file is a quick and dirty hack to attempt to deal with a mild amount of corruption. Thunderbird will generate a new .msf file the next time you run it based on the messages in the folder.

I'm wondering if your inbox is corrupted despite you compacting it several times a day. Sometimes once a folder gets corrupted compacting never cures the corruption and your best bet is to move the messages to another folder, exit thunderbird and delete the "inbox." and "inbox.msf" files so that Thunderbird will create a new inbox folder the next time it runs.

I suggest you read the "Compacting doesn't seem to work" section in http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders and read all of
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keep_it_worki ... derbird%29 . I don't have any problems with corruption but I automate compacting of my folders and keep few messages in the inbox folder.

I found the following using http://lxr.mozilla.org/mailnews/ , but couldn't find any references to that identifier:

line 110# LOCALIZATION NOTES(filterFolderTruncateFailed): %1$S is replaced by the folder name, %2$S is replaced by the brandShortName
line 111 filterFolderTruncateFailed=There was an error truncating the Inbox after filtering a message to folder '%1$S'. You may need to shutdown %2$S and delete INBOX.msf.

[jsm555]

Thanks for the info - I think I did everything suggested in the articles with the exception of removing the inbox.msf file. I had moved the few messages that were in the inbox to their appropriate folders and brought down TB and compacted folders, and everything SEEMS to be working ok - I just wanted to be sure that I'm not doing something that might be causing this, so I can stop doing it.

Actually, my email is pretty tame compared to most people, I suppose - I get no more than 30 new messages a day. But my wife, who is currently using Outlook (and despises it!), gets hundreds in her work as a talent agent, and I've been trying to decide whether it's safe to move her to TB as well - knowing that if anything goes wrong, it'll be 'instant emergency' and that I'll have to drop everything to fix it! And the best way, it seems to me, to insure a successful migration to TB would be to learn as much as I can about 'best practices' that have worked for others. This forum has been very valuable to me in doing that.

Thanks also for pointing me to the article that refers to the AutoMsgSelect extension - I downloaded that extension, and it will save me a lot of bother having to constantly answer "yes" to requests to compact folders. After reading the articles, however, I'm wondering if my problem may have originated from compacting folders while online (I wasn't aware that this could cause problems until I read the article). If that situation can cause corruption, would you suggest that I avoid using the AutoMsgSelect extension (since TB will simply compact folders when necessary, without giving me the chance to go offline beforehand)?

[kv488]

Hi,
same problem here, followed all instructions above, deleted quite a bunch of messages and attachments, but error showed up again after some days:
Extensions installed are: Enigmail, Get All Mail, Tb Progress History, Attachment Tools, AutoMsgSelect (all up to date), TB version 1.5 (20051201)

I've organized my accounts as subfolders of (global) Inbox - do you recommend moving it to "Local Folders"?
Could it be a problem that folders are automatically compacted during mail transfer?

Regards,
Bernhard

[Guest]

I have gotten this error also. I had installed Thunderbird previously so there were othere profiles hanging around and the latest install seemed to be linking to more than one of them.

I cleaned up, created a new profile and it was working for a few days and then bang!, I am seeing it again.

Could this be a bug in TB v1.5??

mh

[Daifne]

Try this:

1. Move any mail in your Inbox - that you want to retain - to subfolders of Local Folders. Backup your profile. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup

2. Close down Thunderbird

3. Navigate to your Thunderbird Profile Folder on your system and DELETE the 'Inbox' and 'Inbox.msf' files for this account. They will be rebuilt when you relaunch Thunderbird. If you have more than one account, make sure you do this in the proper account. All messages will be deleted in this process. If you do make a mistake, I hope you made the backup I suggested in step 1.

When you get this fixed, take a good look at these two links:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keep_it_worki ... derbird%29
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Performance_%28Thunderbird%29

[kv488]

Hi to all,
Good news: seems to be solved in TB 2b1 & b2 - testing since release, an no more pain AT ALL !

Cheers, Bernhard