Recent Thunderbird woes....
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From: Mallorca
Recent Thunderbird woes....
Since one of the (many...) recent updates of Thunderbird I have been having gradually worsening major issues with the handling of junk mail.
It began when mail I manually marked as junk started disappearing straight away instead of going to the collective junk folder. I changed the individual account's junk settings but this had absolutely no effect and when I revisited the account's junk settings page I discovered that my changes had been binned. Reinstating them, thinking that finger trouble had caused it, and saving the changes proved useless because revisiting the settings ten seconds later revealed that they'd been binned once more.
Repeating the exercise with all of the other accounts revealed the same problem occurring everywhere. Altering the global junk settings proved to be equally ineffective. It is now impossible to get anything to be transferred to the junk folder - it all goes straight down the bin.
The problem is made worse when finger trouble happens when reviewing the new mail received each day because a slip with the mouse means that important unread messages can be clicked straight to oblivion by a simple mistake.
I have now begun strongly to suspect that Thunderbird itself has started to tag new mail as junk inappropriately. My safely received mail has now dropped to almost zero and, if I'm quick and paying full attention, I can see the mail arrive in the account and then disappear again within one second - never to be seen again. I have reset the junk learning process several times, in the hope that Thunderbird won't recognise anything as junk, but have seen absolutely no benefit.
I cannot be the only one. Surely Mozilla must know about it. I have told them but have seen neither acknowledgment nor response. I don't want to do it but I'll have to change (any recommendations, please - not webmail?) soon.
It began when mail I manually marked as junk started disappearing straight away instead of going to the collective junk folder. I changed the individual account's junk settings but this had absolutely no effect and when I revisited the account's junk settings page I discovered that my changes had been binned. Reinstating them, thinking that finger trouble had caused it, and saving the changes proved useless because revisiting the settings ten seconds later revealed that they'd been binned once more.
Repeating the exercise with all of the other accounts revealed the same problem occurring everywhere. Altering the global junk settings proved to be equally ineffective. It is now impossible to get anything to be transferred to the junk folder - it all goes straight down the bin.
The problem is made worse when finger trouble happens when reviewing the new mail received each day because a slip with the mouse means that important unread messages can be clicked straight to oblivion by a simple mistake.
I have now begun strongly to suspect that Thunderbird itself has started to tag new mail as junk inappropriately. My safely received mail has now dropped to almost zero and, if I'm quick and paying full attention, I can see the mail arrive in the account and then disappear again within one second - never to be seen again. I have reset the junk learning process several times, in the hope that Thunderbird won't recognise anything as junk, but have seen absolutely no benefit.
I cannot be the only one. Surely Mozilla must know about it. I have told them but have seen neither acknowledgment nor response. I don't want to do it but I'll have to change (any recommendations, please - not webmail?) soon.
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From: .
I don't have an answer, but a suggestion would be to start in safe mode and then run through the diagnostic steps given in the second of these two links
I'd be inclined to suspect an incompatible plugin is the cause - maybe a third party A/V or Spam-detection program? What security software do you have on the machine?
Safe Mode - MozillaZine Knowledge Base
Standard diagnostic - Thunderbird - MozillaZine Knowledge Base
PS - what is actually doing the Spam filtering? Is it just the default Thunderbird filter, or have you installed a plugin like Spamatu or Habu?
I'd be inclined to suspect an incompatible plugin is the cause - maybe a third party A/V or Spam-detection program? What security software do you have on the machine?
Safe Mode - MozillaZine Knowledge Base
Standard diagnostic - Thunderbird - MozillaZine Knowledge Base
PS - what is actually doing the Spam filtering? Is it just the default Thunderbird filter, or have you installed a plugin like Spamatu or Habu?
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From: Earth
I have been having gradually worsening major issues with the handling of junk mail.
Spam filtering at client level is a waste of time.
By the time the spam reaches your computer, its too late, you've lost many upstream filtering opportunities and techniques that you can't employ at client level. You've also just wasted your bandwidth downloading the junk and your CPU capacity analysing it.
The false positive risk is also a lot higher with client side filtering, and the miss-rate is also higher.
Talk to your mail host about spam filtering services they offer. If they don't offer any, consider changing mail host to one that does.
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From: uk
I am running Thunderbird 2.006 which is probably ancient, as most of my stuff seems to be. You've maybe given a good example of why I don't rush to 'upgrade'.
Despite that, I use a free mail preview utility on my ISP provided mail that not only gives you the chance to look at headers/origin but also lets you view the message without downloading.
Despite that, I use a free mail preview utility on my ISP provided mail that not only gives you the chance to look at headers/origin but also lets you view the message without downloading.
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From: Mallorca
Once again, thank you all for your support.
I've backed up my profile Milo and tomorrow morning, feeling fresher, I'll follow the Standard Diagnostic procedure from Mozilla and will see what I achieve and then take things from there. Never having had this sort of problem with Thunderbird or Firefox, I didn't know that this procedure was available and had been published.
I'll certainly take your advice on board mixture. I see the benefit of the junk handling (even when it works as it says on the tin) in Thunderbird as being pretty marginal so I'll probably ditch it for the future. I hope that my lost e-mails (having spotted the senders on a few more this evening, just as they disappeared into the pit, I saw that they absolutely were not junk) will be recoverable from some dark corner of my hard drive. My choice has always been that my e-mails are scrubbed from the server as I download them but I may review that now.
I must say, vulcanised, that I can see some merit in your approach as "better the devil you know...." but I have always gone the other way and installed every update as soon as reasonably possible because I feel that better security generally comes from that approach.
I'll post a report upon my success or otherwise soon.
Thank you again.
I've backed up my profile Milo and tomorrow morning, feeling fresher, I'll follow the Standard Diagnostic procedure from Mozilla and will see what I achieve and then take things from there. Never having had this sort of problem with Thunderbird or Firefox, I didn't know that this procedure was available and had been published.
I'll certainly take your advice on board mixture. I see the benefit of the junk handling (even when it works as it says on the tin) in Thunderbird as being pretty marginal so I'll probably ditch it for the future. I hope that my lost e-mails (having spotted the senders on a few more this evening, just as they disappeared into the pit, I saw that they absolutely were not junk) will be recoverable from some dark corner of my hard drive. My choice has always been that my e-mails are scrubbed from the server as I download them but I may review that now.
I must say, vulcanised, that I can see some merit in your approach as "better the devil you know...." but I have always gone the other way and installed every update as soon as reasonably possible because I feel that better security generally comes from that approach.
I'll post a report upon my success or otherwise soon.
Thank you again.
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From: Mallorca
I would probably have chosen to use private messaging from this point so as not to force others to feel that they are intruding upon private grief but, in an altruistic hope of helping others and still with an anticipation of a positive result in the end, I'll stick with the public forum - if you'll all put up with me.
Rather than use the old copy of MozBackup which I've had on file for ages, I downloaded a brand new one. I ran it first to back up my Thunderbird 12 and watched as it chuntered its way through copying my folders etc.
I opened Thunderbird in its own safe mode and I disabled all of the plugins and extensions which safe mode hadn't already done. I then visited global junk settings to switch off all automatic junk filtering. When I visited each account's individual junk setting I noticed that, still, it paid no attention to any changes I made but reverted to whatever it fancied by the time I revisited each account to peek at the consequences of the changes which I had made.
Unable to do more, but at least a little optimistic that the newly reset global rules might hold, I connected up my router and, still in its safe mode, I let Thunderbird loose on any new e-mails which might be waiting on the server while I watched closely. There were six. Two of them disappeared at once while four went fleetingly to my inbox before disappearing from there as well. Junk and deleted remained empty. This suggested that there were at least two separate problems with the operation of my copy of Thunderbird so I decided to go straight to its replacement rather than trying to interfere further because each procedure would require to be tested and that would probably lose me even more new e-mails....
I carefully followed the procedure for uninstalling Thunderbird and then installed it anew, noticing that the new version had moved on to 12.0.1. Then into MozBackup to restore my profile, my face gently wreathed in smiles - well, up until the point that MozBackup posted the message "File missing or corrupt" - that file being the very one which it had itself created only half an hour earlier.
Help, please! This is now very serious.
Rather than use the old copy of MozBackup which I've had on file for ages, I downloaded a brand new one. I ran it first to back up my Thunderbird 12 and watched as it chuntered its way through copying my folders etc.
I opened Thunderbird in its own safe mode and I disabled all of the plugins and extensions which safe mode hadn't already done. I then visited global junk settings to switch off all automatic junk filtering. When I visited each account's individual junk setting I noticed that, still, it paid no attention to any changes I made but reverted to whatever it fancied by the time I revisited each account to peek at the consequences of the changes which I had made.
Unable to do more, but at least a little optimistic that the newly reset global rules might hold, I connected up my router and, still in its safe mode, I let Thunderbird loose on any new e-mails which might be waiting on the server while I watched closely. There were six. Two of them disappeared at once while four went fleetingly to my inbox before disappearing from there as well. Junk and deleted remained empty. This suggested that there were at least two separate problems with the operation of my copy of Thunderbird so I decided to go straight to its replacement rather than trying to interfere further because each procedure would require to be tested and that would probably lose me even more new e-mails....
I carefully followed the procedure for uninstalling Thunderbird and then installed it anew, noticing that the new version had moved on to 12.0.1. Then into MozBackup to restore my profile, my face gently wreathed in smiles - well, up until the point that MozBackup posted the message "File missing or corrupt" - that file being the very one which it had itself created only half an hour earlier.
Help, please! This is now very serious.
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From: Earth
Cameronian,
Sounds like the sort of thing you should be using the public forum for, to ensure you get the widest possible range of advice before deciding which route to take with your data.
I'm going to sit back and watch on this one though, haven't used MozBackup myself, tend to use the old-fashioned profile backup method. Something to bear in mind for the future when you're back up and running.
Good luck.
Sounds like the sort of thing you should be using the public forum for, to ensure you get the widest possible range of advice before deciding which route to take with your data.
I'm going to sit back and watch on this one though, haven't used MozBackup myself, tend to use the old-fashioned profile backup method. Something to bear in mind for the future when you're back up and running.
Good luck.
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From: .
Before going any further
1) when you uninstall Firefox usually the user profile is not destroyed unless you specifically request it. Reinstalling the program usually finds the profile again. Did you actually uninstall or delete the profile?
2) Is you e-mail IMAP or POP? Which company is it with?
3) are you sure that spam controls are not running on the e-mail providers server? It strikes me that mail is arriving pre-flagged
4) which operating system are you running
5) what security / antivirus software do you have on this machine?
As mixture says, DON'T take this to PMs. The more people who can offer an insight into this the better
1) when you uninstall Firefox usually the user profile is not destroyed unless you specifically request it. Reinstalling the program usually finds the profile again. Did you actually uninstall or delete the profile?
2) Is you e-mail IMAP or POP? Which company is it with?
3) are you sure that spam controls are not running on the e-mail providers server? It strikes me that mail is arriving pre-flagged
4) which operating system are you running
5) what security / antivirus software do you have on this machine?
As mixture says, DON'T take this to PMs. The more people who can offer an insight into this the better
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From: Mallorca
Hi once again, chaps.
1. It was Thunderbird which I uninstalled, not Firefox, and I did it following the instructions in the Mozilla Standard Diagnostic which you kindly sent me, Milo. It specifically says, in capitals, that the uninstall will NOT delete any data or profile material.
2. My e/mail is POP and it-s with Terra - a division of Telefónica which is the principal national telephone company here in Spain.
3. I'm not certain that the e-mails weren't preflagged as spam by the server but they weren't spam and it has never happened before. Also, there have been issues with junk posted on some Mozilla fora.
4. XP Home
5. Microsoft firewall, Avast free, Spybot, and sundry other stuff like BetterPrivacy, AdBlock Plus, Ghostery, and some anti-tracking stuff too.
I saw the profile being backed up over some time, with many of the file and folder names flickering up on screen as the process was being carried out. I saw the name of the backed up profile file (but didn't write it down, thinking that Mozilla could surely be trusted to handle something so fundamental yet routine). I thought of using Recuva to look for it but decided to talk to you all first before interfering more.
This is really serious now because, for sure, the profile back up will have overwritten my previous back ups so I will have lost ten years of business and personal mail.
1. It was Thunderbird which I uninstalled, not Firefox, and I did it following the instructions in the Mozilla Standard Diagnostic which you kindly sent me, Milo. It specifically says, in capitals, that the uninstall will NOT delete any data or profile material.
2. My e/mail is POP and it-s with Terra - a division of Telefónica which is the principal national telephone company here in Spain.
3. I'm not certain that the e-mails weren't preflagged as spam by the server but they weren't spam and it has never happened before. Also, there have been issues with junk posted on some Mozilla fora.
4. XP Home
5. Microsoft firewall, Avast free, Spybot, and sundry other stuff like BetterPrivacy, AdBlock Plus, Ghostery, and some anti-tracking stuff too.
I saw the profile being backed up over some time, with many of the file and folder names flickering up on screen as the process was being carried out. I saw the name of the backed up profile file (but didn't write it down, thinking that Mozilla could surely be trusted to handle something so fundamental yet routine). I thought of using Recuva to look for it but decided to talk to you all first before interfering more.
This is really serious now because, for sure, the profile back up will have overwritten my previous back ups so I will have lost ten years of business and personal mail.
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From: YMML
Addressed to Cameronian. For some reason I didn't read further up the thread and see his mentions of MozBackup. Personally I just copy the profile directory.
I'd suggest Cameronian searches for .pcv files to see what backups are available.
I'd suggest Cameronian searches for .pcv files to see what backups are available.
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From: Mallorca
Well, le Pingouin, I've just done that thank you. There is a file for Thunderbird backup, with the correct date, of a couple of Gb. The only odd thing (apart from the fact that MozBackup says that it's either not there or corrupt) is that it says it's a backup of Thunderbird 6 rather than the Thunderbird 12 that I'm actually using.
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From: YMML
I wouldn't worry too much about the version of TB being mentioned as the mail format hasn't changed.
.pcv is just a zip file apparently so you should be able to open the file to see what you've got if all else fails.
It might just be the backup isn't where MozBackup thinks it should be:
Backup file was not found or corrupted
.pcv is just a zip file apparently so you should be able to open the file to see what you've got if all else fails.
It might just be the backup isn't where MozBackup thinks it should be:
Backup file was not found or corrupted
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From: .
two points
1) In my earlier post when I mentioned Firefox I meant Thunderbird
2) Why does the profile need to be restored? Uninstaling Thunderbird does not uninstall the user profile so there is no need to restore it. In fact, if we work on the assumption that the profile is corrupt and is causing the problem, all you are attempting is to back up and reinstall a corrupt profile.
it seems to me that what needs to be done is first for for the existing mail folders to be backed up by copying or exporting (and I mean physically coped - not backed up using some arcane compression algorithm that stands a good chance of not working). The Thunderbird to be totally uninstalled and for the user profiles to be removed (or moved so they can't be "seen" by the program.
Then Thunderbird reinstalled and a new profile created. Then finally import the mails back in
1) In my earlier post when I mentioned Firefox I meant Thunderbird
2) Why does the profile need to be restored? Uninstaling Thunderbird does not uninstall the user profile so there is no need to restore it. In fact, if we work on the assumption that the profile is corrupt and is causing the problem, all you are attempting is to back up and reinstall a corrupt profile.
it seems to me that what needs to be done is first for for the existing mail folders to be backed up by copying or exporting (and I mean physically coped - not backed up using some arcane compression algorithm that stands a good chance of not working). The Thunderbird to be totally uninstalled and for the user profiles to be removed (or moved so they can't be "seen" by the program.
Then Thunderbird reinstalled and a new profile created. Then finally import the mails back in
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From: Mallorca
Well, it's easy when you know how!! Thank you one and all because I have my mail back. It seems so obvious now....
Opening my new Thunderbird revealed half a dozen new e-mails which were immediately downloaded and all but one of them immediately disappeared, just as before. They're not in Junk and they're not in Deleted. So I revisit Security on the Options menu and unclick adaptive filtering for junk and then visit the settings page and remove all junk filtering once again - it seems ok until I revisit each account to find that, yet again, they've all gone back to the previous unwanted settings. Just as before, my NEW Thunderbird is ignoring what I select and doing its own thing which includes ditching almost every incoming new e-mail... Obviously I can't put up with that. I took the opportunity to disable all add-ons, plug-ins and extensions because a relatively small number had been re-enabled while away.
It was suggested earlier that this may be in response to the server, unannounced, labelling some stuff as junk before I download it. I really don't think that this is happening and, in any event, my choice of global non-filtering via the Options, Security menu should avoid my Thunderbird paying it any heed. That it ignores and resets my junk filtering instructions seems a much more likely cause.
Milo, that tutorial (idiot's guide) link is most welcome, thank you. Unfortunately I have found nothing in it about how to deal with a disobedient Thunderbird! That's why I installed a new copy in the first place. As I said at the beginning, I did ask for help on this fundamental disobedience on a Mozilla forum but have received nothing yet. I did see that it appeared that I wasn't the only one.
Opening my new Thunderbird revealed half a dozen new e-mails which were immediately downloaded and all but one of them immediately disappeared, just as before. They're not in Junk and they're not in Deleted. So I revisit Security on the Options menu and unclick adaptive filtering for junk and then visit the settings page and remove all junk filtering once again - it seems ok until I revisit each account to find that, yet again, they've all gone back to the previous unwanted settings. Just as before, my NEW Thunderbird is ignoring what I select and doing its own thing which includes ditching almost every incoming new e-mail... Obviously I can't put up with that. I took the opportunity to disable all add-ons, plug-ins and extensions because a relatively small number had been re-enabled while away.
It was suggested earlier that this may be in response to the server, unannounced, labelling some stuff as junk before I download it. I really don't think that this is happening and, in any event, my choice of global non-filtering via the Options, Security menu should avoid my Thunderbird paying it any heed. That it ignores and resets my junk filtering instructions seems a much more likely cause.
Milo, that tutorial (idiot's guide) link is most welcome, thank you. Unfortunately I have found nothing in it about how to deal with a disobedient Thunderbird! That's why I installed a new copy in the first place. As I said at the beginning, I did ask for help on this fundamental disobedience on a Mozilla forum but have received nothing yet. I did see that it appeared that I wasn't the only one.
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From: Mallorca
Two separate issues, Milo! I recovered the profile (phew!) but its apparently possible loss was consequent upon following the diagnosis procedure you sent me for the main issue, which was the false and uncontrollable elimination of newly incoming e-mails by Thunderbird which was (very, very) probably linked to its ignoring of my chosen global junk settings and also those for each individual e-mail account.
The faulty junk handling, for which you kindly sent me the Mozilla Diagnosis procedure etc., remains exactly as before, even though I followed the diagnosis procedure to its end which required the uninstalling of Thunderbird and the installing of a brand new copy (which is where the backed-up profile wouldn't come back - now solved).
And you say that you're confused!
The faulty junk handling, for which you kindly sent me the Mozilla Diagnosis procedure etc., remains exactly as before, even though I followed the diagnosis procedure to its end which required the uninstalling of Thunderbird and the installing of a brand new copy (which is where the backed-up profile wouldn't come back - now solved).
And you say that you're confused!
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From: Mallorca
Oh dear, I'm worried by the new and deep silence here!
Basically I'm back where I was - though at least that means that I've got my profile back! Thunderbird still ignores any changes I try to make to the individual junk settings.I have now unticked all of the boxes on the Options Junk handling screen and reset the junk learning process. These settings are holding but are having precisely no effect as even just now, when I looked before making this post, a new e-mail appeared and disappeared off to nowhere immediately.
Basically I'm back where I was - though at least that means that I've got my profile back! Thunderbird still ignores any changes I try to make to the individual junk settings.I have now unticked all of the boxes on the Options Junk handling screen and reset the junk learning process. These settings are holding but are having precisely no effect as even just now, when I looked before making this post, a new e-mail appeared and disappeared off to nowhere immediately.