Forcing a global rebuild of all the Thunderbird index

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stephm
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Joined: September 24th, 2004, 9:42 am

Forcing a global rebuild of all the Thunderbird index

Post by stephm »

I have noticed a chronic disconnect between subject and the actual content of email.

The only way to correct this seems to be to rebuild the index of any folder with this problem -- which is a royal pain.

Is there anyway to force thunderbird to rebuild all its indexes?
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tanstaafl
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Re: Forcing a global rebuild of all the Thunderbird index

Post by tanstaafl »

I assume if you delete globl-message-db.sqlite in the profile that forces it to index everything again.
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Lee_Dailey
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Re: Forcing a global rebuild of all the Thunderbird index

Post by Lee_Dailey »

howdy stephm,

are you talking about rebuilding the per-folder indexes? the *.msf files?

if so, then you can use this addon ...
Xpunge

... to compact - and then automatically re-index - all the folders with one command.

take care,
lee
stephm
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Joined: September 24th, 2004, 9:42 am

Re: Forcing a global rebuild of all the Thunderbird index

Post by stephm »

Actually, neither of those seem to do the job. I have to go and hit the rebuild index on the property pages to get the indexes to completely and correctly rebuild for each folder...
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DanRaisch
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Re: Forcing a global rebuild of all the Thunderbird index

Post by DanRaisch »

You can also force a rebuild of all per-folder indexes by closing Thunderbird and deleting all files with the extension .msf. The indexes will be rebuilt as each folder is accessed. NOTE that this procedure will remove any folder customization previously implemented, such as column order changes, etc.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Forcing a global rebuild of all the Thunderbird index

Post by tanstaafl »

Does this problem only occur when searching or does it occur if you just look at the contents of some folder?

Did you upgrade to 3.x , go back to 2.0.0.23 and still have some sort of smart folders account? If so, its due to that pseudo account. It gradually corrupts all indexs. You can't delete that pseudo account normally, you have to edit prefs.js to do that.

Search for smart folders in prefs.js. In my case its using server4. I can tell that from user_pref("mail.server.server4.name", "Smart Folders");

Then find its account number. In my case its account4. I can tell that from user_pref("mail.account.account4.server", "server4");

Then find mail.accountmanager.accounts and remove the account from it.

user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account1,account2,account6,account8,account9,account10,account7,account3,account4");

changes to

user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account1,account2,account6,account8,account9,account10,account7,account3");

Delete all of the settings for the smart folder server (in my case mail.server.server4) and the setting where it assigns that server to an account (in my case user_pref("mail.account.account4.server", "server4");). Otherwise Thunderbird will add the smart folders account back.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Forcing a global rebuild of all the Thunderbird index

Post by tanstaafl »

I added the text about deleting smart folders to http://kb.mozillazine.org/Go_back_to_an ... hunderbird
stephm
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Joined: September 24th, 2004, 9:42 am

Re: Forcing a global rebuild of all the Thunderbird index

Post by stephm »

The problem I describe, that of subjects and text not agreeing, and having text that shouldn't be in a given folder, happens when I look at the contents of a folder.

It happened under Thunderbird 2, so reverting isn't really useful. I am running 3.0.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Forcing a global rebuild of all the Thunderbird index

Post by tanstaafl »

Pick one of the messages (ideally one that is plain text) where they don't agree. Use Control-U or "view -> message source" and look at the raw message source. Does the Subject: header match the text?

I'm asking to verify that the message folder isn't corrupted, and any problems are with the index.

I suggest you run Thunderbird in safe mode (not to be confused with windows safe mode) and rebuild the indexs again. See if that prevents the problem (due to it temporarily disabling all add-ons). If so, then you need to isolate what add-on is at fault.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode
stephm
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Joined: September 24th, 2004, 9:42 am

Re: Forcing a global rebuild of all the Thunderbird index

Post by stephm »

I have verified that the subject don't agree by looking at the source. I've used both the C-U and looked at it with emacs.

It could be an add in. However, this is one of those intermittent problems, which makes debugging some much fun.
Looking4answer
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Rebuid index / column headers

Post by Looking4answer »

I customized the column headers order like this on a particular folder: Subject, From, Date.
However when I do a rebuild index on this folder, the column headers order for that particular folder is reset to the default column headers order of thunderbird (and at the same time shows all the previous hidden column headers).
I have looked all over the place on internet for a solution and I have not found anything. It seems to be a bug.
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