Problems with Filters

User Help for Mozilla Thunderbird
User avatar
makaiguy
Posts: 16878
Joined: November 18th, 2002, 6:44 pm
Location: Somewhere in SE USA
Contact:

Re: Problems with Filters

Post by makaiguy »

It's been reported that the following may solve this problem.

IMPORTANT: Exit Thunderbird.
Go into your profile files and delete any tmprules.dat files.
Restart Thunderbird.

Where to find your profile:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder
Windows users, be sure to read the last paragraph in the "For Windows Users" note re displaying hidden folders. Also, you may want to turn off "Hide extensions for known file types".
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
iberger
Posts: 79
Joined: December 14th, 2004, 10:53 am

Re: Problems with Filters

Post by iberger »

I looked in C:\Documents and Settings\Ivan\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\32ph5jby.default, and there is no tmprules.dat file to delete. (Dat files I do have are compreg, panacea, training, virtualFolders, and xpti.)

I am running XP pro, and my problem is filters disappearing when I exit Thunderbird. I'm running the latest version but this has persisted through several versions over the past few months.
Ivan Berger
MrWylbur
Posts: 1
Joined: November 6th, 2009, 8:30 am

Re: Problems with Filters

Post by MrWylbur »

I can echo iberger's post today. I did find my profile and did find a tmprules.dat. Ideleted it, but NONE of my filters came back.

I don't have time to test and see what is and is not working. I will have to come back to this later.

What size should the filter *.dat files be? I had lots of filters, and all the filters in each account folder are just 1k each. That does not look good to me.

Thanks!

Wylbur

iberger wrote:I looked in C:\Documents and Settings\Ivan\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\32ph5jby.default, and there is no tmprules.dat file to delete. (Dat files I do have are compreg, panacea, training, virtualFolders, and xpti.)

I am running XP pro, and my problem is filters disappearing when I exit Thunderbird. I'm running the latest version but this has persisted through several versions over the past few months.
User avatar
makaiguy
Posts: 16878
Joined: November 18th, 2002, 6:44 pm
Location: Somewhere in SE USA
Contact:

Re: Problems with Filters

Post by makaiguy »

MrWylbur wrote: I did find my profile and did find a tmprules.dat. Ideleted it, but NONE of my filters came back.

I don't have time to test and see what is and is not working. I will have to come back to this later.

What size should the filter *.dat files be? I had lots of filters, and all the filters in each account folder are just 1k each. That does not look good to me.

Thanks!

Wylbur

iberger wrote:I looked in C:\Documents and Settings\Ivan\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\32ph5jby.defaul


tmprules.dat is where the filter info is stored when you are creating or editing filters in any given account. When you exit the program, this information SHOULD be saved to a permanent file and the tmprules.dat file SHOULD be deleted. Sometimes this doesn't happen (it's unclear to me under what circumstances, perhaps not exiting properly?), so the next time you load the program, your creations/edits are lost.

The next time you try to edit filters, if the old tmprules.dat file is still there, your operating system can't open a new file by that name so it createss a new file name by appending a number to it, or whatever naming convention your OS uses. Once this process gets started, your filter creations/edits will never get saved since they are now being written to a file other than tmprules.dat.

So exiting TBird and deleting any tmprules.dat files you find still hanging around cannot restore lost filters, but it can get you set up so your next filter edits ARE saved.

... at least that's the theory...
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
Post Reply