Thunderbird says no messages when there are new messages

[djmills]

We have 3 email addresses configured in Thunderbird. All were working correctly (send and receive). 2 days ago one stopped receiving messages. You can click on "Get mail" and choose this account, then as normal down the bottom left it shows "Connected to pop...." and the progress bar on the bottom right has the green bar moving over it. After a few seconds the message and the progress bar disappear - but no messages were retrieved.

I can then log onto the ISP's webmail interface and prove that the are a collection of messages from the time when it stopped retrieving them (2 days ago).

I set up a kmail client on my Linux box and configured the same account with "Leave messages on server" enabled. It was able to retrieve all the messages. Yet still Thunderbird cannot. I sent a collection of test messages to myself. Thunderbird keeps getting nothing, kmail gets them all.

Again using the webmail interface I emptied the mailbox and then sent a few more test messages. Still nothing can be retrieved using Thunderbird yet all is OK with kmail.

Finally I set up a dummy email account with my ISP and a forward from my real account to my dummy account. Then I added an account to Thunderbird and an extra identity for it (my real one) so that replies have the correct "From".

This workaround means that I am back in business, but should not be necessary. Is there some way (Thunderbird log messages or other) that I can diagnose the problem and correct it?

[DanRaisch]

Moving to Thunderbird Support.

How recently have you compacted your folders? Compacting is something that needs to be done regularly in any email program. We recommend weekly, but many of us do it daily. When done often enough, it can be an extremely fast process. Not doing so can lead to problems like those you are experiencing. See this about how to and why it's so important: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders

If you haven't been doing that before, first back up your Thunderbird Profile -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup then compact all folders. If 'compacting' them (and leaving a long enough time for the process to complete) doesn't fully resolve the problem then do the following on each account:

Close Thunderbird. Find and delete all of the files with the .msf file extension in your profile folder/Mail http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Folder#Thunderbird including your Local Folders, especially if you are using the global inbox. You must have "View hidden files and folders" on http://spywarewarrior.com/viewtopic.php?t=272 and you need to set "hide extensions for known file types" off (just below View Hidden) if you are using Windows. These are your mail summary files and do not hold any messages themselves. They will be rebuilt the next time you open each folder in Thunderbird. Compact all your folders when you have completed this.

To avoid this happening again, see the tips in these articles:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keep_it_worki ... derbird%29
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Performance_%28Thunderbird%29

[djmills]

Thanks for the advice.

Compacting folder did free up some disk space but didn't solve the problem.

Removing all the .msf files did solve the problem.

[DanRaisch]

You're welcome.

[phil solo]

Hi there, I found this thread while trying to resolve my own similar problem, however compacting folders and deleting the MSF files does not seem to have helped. I suspect my issue is slightly different in that I am receiving some mail on some accounts but not others.

My problems seem to have begun when I swapped out AVG 8 for Avast anti-virus. Having tried the abovce to no avail I then checked my Filter Log, as it became clear to me that the missing mail was that upon which Mesasage Filters were run. Normally I set my main accounts to fetch Headers only, and then run a series of Filters to Fetch Body from POP3 server and sort into various folders according to sender criteria etc. My Filters are of the form "If Sender is X, Retrieve Body, Move to Folder Y", in that order.

Recent Filter Log activity shows the Retrieve Body action for each message, but no Move To action, and the message itself is nowhere to be found in any Inbox or nested subfolder. Where did they go? and how do I convince Thunderbird to "re-download" them? And why should changing my AV software have broken things?

[Daifne]

phil solo,
You have a different problem. Please start a new topic. These issues can get quite involved and helping more than one person in a topic just confuses everyone. Thanks.

[djmills]

My problem reccurred a couple of months ago. But this time compacting and removine the msf files didn't help. In the end I had to create another email account with a different ISP and get the emails for my main account to forward to this second account and then POP from there.

I then had to set up a few identity related settings in Thunderbird so that responding to mails that had been through this process used my original email address as sender etc.