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Hi Mac, I apologise if it looks as if I was ignoring you but it was simply that I neither saw nor now understand your posting! It may be something to do with the Latin issue which I have just mentioned above! Thank you, anyway!
I'm still one of the apparent few who (so far) hasn't had any problems with Thunderbird, even with the latest updates.
I do not use Tbird to handle junk mail. This is managed by Mailwasher, and so Tbird never downloads junk mail of any sort. It doesn't have to "make decisions' in this area.
I understand that Mailwasher is despised by some users, but it has worked for me for the past x years (almost since it was first released), and it continues to do so.
That's no real consolation to current users what are finding that Thunderbird is not doing all they ask of it, however, it would almost seem that the Junk Mail option could be at the heart of the recent failures.
Sometimes programmers build more features into their updates than are asked for, needed, or actually capable of being reliably delivered.
I vote for simplicity. That makes me a slow adopter I guess, but at my age, I can live with that. (I'm still using XP as well)
Looking back to my own post number 38, can anybody please help (Milo, perhaps?) with suggestions over how to recover the junked mail which I have traced to the profile subfolder, eliminating all of the superfluous routing information on the way?
It does seem tempting simply to change the text in the msgFilterRules.dat file in the same profile subfolder but probably that's just too simple to work! Is there an enlightened opinion out there, please?
Hi Milo! The mail isn't in a folder on the "front page" but in the subfolder named "Junk" of the folder "Mail" in my Profile. I have probably explained it better in my post number 38 but it doesn't appear in the folders which normally are displayed onscreen. It has been filed away in the profile just like the contents of the unemptied Trash folder.
In that subfolder of the Profile there is an enormously long continuous text which includes each of the lost e-mails within several times as much routing information for the original. For each the extra routing info amounts to at least ten times the size of the text of the actual message which makes it difficult to identify and isolate each useful text but perhaps there is some established procedure for reversing the process and stripping off the guff to leave just the text back in the on screen inbox.
Then I have to find a way of stopping it happening. Your trick with the pref file looked good but the replacement that was recreated turned out to be just as wrong as the one I had renamed. That was why I mentioned the msgFilterData.dat file in the same subfolder of Mail in the Profile. In there it appears that the filtering rules to be applied are written and so might be susceptible to changing.... but I really don't know what I'm doing and could stuff the whole issue! What do you think?
If I right-click on the Junk file in the Mail subfolder of the Profile then yes, I get various options - I can copy it or I can send it to a zipped folder or, I now see, to a Mail Recipient (I don't know whether that means one of my "front page" mail accounts or a new recipient via normal e-mail)
I've just tried and it means a normal recipient via e-mail so I've sent it to my wife. When she gets in I'll ask her to open her account and see what has arrived. You'll be the next to know!
Thank you for that idea. We'll see how far it gets us shortly. I still have to stop it happening in the first place. Your trick with the pref. file looked so promising but perhaps it got tripped up because I misinterpreted the exact order of execution of what you had suggested. The order of changing the name of the old file and of backing up and reinstating the profile, perhaps. It all seemed promising until the new pref. file turned out just as wrong as the one I had renamed. Would you have the time to set out the precise order of what needs to be done and I'll try it again?
Is my idea of tinkering with the text in the msgFilterRules.dat file (sorry, I got the name wrong a couple of posts ago) which is in the same subfolder of the Mail folder of the Profile likely to work or will it wreck everything?
If I select copy then right-clicking in the inbox just offers me some other unhelpful options. If I left-click the inbox and then left-click edit then it doesn't offer me the Paste option. I expect I could paste to a word page or similar.
Tried it and all it does is paste an image of the Junk icon rather than the contents of the file. However the text of the junk file has arrived in my wife's e-mail inbox. I still have to separate the useful text wheat from the much greater routing information chaff... It would be great were there a function to reverse the process which moved it from the ·front page" Junk folder to the back up in the profile because one could hope that it would reinstate the individual e-mails discretely in the front page Junk folder.
I have tried once again to elicit the generation of a new and functioning "prefs.js" file in the main page of my Thunderbird Profile, as suggested by Milo in his posting number 21 above. When I then close and reopen Thunderbird a new version of the file is dutifully created but I get the "Boing" of death and the following error message appears in a dialogue box:-
Windows Script Host
Script: C:\Documents and Settings\John\Application
Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\1iegx6og.default\prefs.js
Line: 1
Char: 1
Error: Invalid character
Code: 800A03F6
Source: Microsoft JScript compilation error
Thunderbird then behaves as before, rejecting any changes I may make to the Junk Settings for each mail account and my incoming mail disappears as before as well.
It seems that the program is compromised and is even regenerating the file in a corrupted manner. I have uninstalled and then reinstalled a "new" Thunderbird from the Mozilla website and the newly generated replacement prefs.js file was corrupt then too.
Does this error message give any new clue as to what is wrong and how to diagnose and fix the program, please?
Last edited by Cameronian; 10th Jun 2012 at 23:24.
If it were mine, my course of action now would be to 1) physically copy theThunderbird profile to a new location 2) Uninstall Thunderbird 3) Delete all traces of Thunderbird from the Windows user profiles. This would be in multiple locations, some hidden in each profile - and you'd have to include the default and all users profiles as well 4) delete everything related in program files - including the common files subfolder 5) clean out the registry line by line
Then reinstall the program and IMPORT the mailboxes from within the program from the store location-not copy the files back
As to the misplaced stuff, I'd consider forwarding that to myself first so that there would be copies in the inbox
I just came to this, so may not have absorbed everything others have written.
Thunderbird, by default, puts your mail into a directory called C:\Users\<name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<random >.default\Mail (or even ...\<name>\Mail
When Thunderbird played up a few years ago, I copied all the "Mail" folder to another drive, as I:\Mail.
It gave the various e-mail address folder some pretty wacky names, such as pipex1, pipex2, pipex3, pipex4 etc. I then changed those to the e-mail address each referred to. So I have I:\Mail\keef.com etc
Then I uninstalled Thunderbird completely, and did a fresh installation. It took me an hour or so to set up the several E-mail addresses I use, which I then changed in the "Server Settings" to point at I:\Mail\<the relevant folder>
The mail all appeared as it should and it's behaved immaculately ever since. Deleted mail goes into a folder called "Trash" under each address. I can recover stuff from it if I wish.
If I create a new mail account, Thunderbird goes back to the long stream in C:\Users and is then copied and changed to I:\Mail. There is a way to change the default settings, but I don't do it often enough for it to be worth messing with.
I also have an e-mail account called "Oh bother", which is where I drop errant giant mail files when I want to see what the mail in them is. That's not been used since the "great reinstallation".
I think if he tries that here theres a danger the corrupt scripting will get back again, which is why i suggest he IMPORTS the e-mails rather than trying to reuse the old folders
Thank you for your suggestions, gentlemen. I apologise for the delay in replying. I especially appreciate that your schemes, which seem broadly similar at first inspection, are aimed at fixing Thunderbird as opposed to flitting to another mail client. I have been struck by warnings of doom over that because Thunderbird is not helpful to attempts to leave.
I understand that I must seem pathetically timid of this aspect of things but even the vocabulary you have both used in your explanations is beyond my ken! Cocking it up through misunderstanding is not an option which I can afford.
My idea is to spend a couple of days trying to get to grips with what you have explained, trying to convert it all into a series of progressive steps. I am more than likely to ask for some clarification. Please don't hesitate, even for a moment, to tell me if any thoughts come to you which might help - especially to make things simpler. Thank you once again.
Last edited by Cameronian; 11th Jun 2012 at 15:10.
Well, to anybody else who has had this problem (see early posts) and, perhaps, kept quiet about it - it has been completely fixed in the update to Thunderbird 17.0 They certainly took their time over it!
Junk handling has returned to its original, exemplary, self and the account settings now change when I want them to.
Thank you all for your help all of those months ago. Somebody at Mozilla must have been paying attention, even if they didn't let on.
