Bugzilla

(In reply to Ness Blackbird from comment #18)
> (In reply to Richard Leger from comment #13)
> > According to user stories, repair of folder does not fix the issue.
> > The current workaround that works is to turn off message synchronisation (disable download for offline use).
> 
> You say that, but my strong impression (from looking for a solution) is that this is a common problem, and this workaround isn't well-known. I really think it drives a lot of people off of Thunderbird.
> 
> I stopped using TB for a while, but I couldn't find anything better, so I went back for yet another round of looking for workarounds and finally figured out what to do -- but not before I moved a couple hundred thousand emails onto my local drive, only to find that they are no longer searchable, and so might as well have been deleted :(

Ness,

A user and Moz volunteer here. I don't consider it a common problem as I, using TB 94 beta, only have just begun seeing it beginning with that version. I never saw it when I was on 91 but it isn't to say it isn't happening or hasn't been introduced in a recent 91.x version as a bug or coding mistake. I myself have 20-25+ years of emails totaling 110GB (that came from back in the Eudora days of the 90s). If you have many hundreds of thousands of emails as I myself do, re-indexing that all over again after coming back from another client, I would surmise, would take a long, long time.

If you didn't know, TB has seen a resuscitation after having been on life support with effectively zero development since mid-2012. Google "thunderbird life support", there's a CNET article about it. It's only just been in the past couple years that >active< development re-started again and some new blood (in the form of a couple new developer hires, if my memory serves me correctly) was injected into TB. There is a Mount Everest's worth of catching up to do from 2012 to present. Also, There was also a HUGE amount of layoffs that happen at Mozilla in 2020 which further slowed TB development.

For some, the development or bug fixing pace may seem glacial. To a large degree, there is a historical reason for that. As a user, I've seen a lot of break/fix happening in the past couple years. But I've seen a HUGE improvement in TB performance. For a while, TB felt like a car that was left in the driveway under a tarp and finally got started 10 years later. Whatever code was left to rot between 2012 and present is getting fixed/updated. Slowly. It'll take a lot of massaging. I understand that fully. I have ZERO expectations of any immediacy of bug fixing for a product for which I pay $0.

I am not here to apologize for things that get broken along the way but I am thankful to Mozilla for keeping TB going and being motivated to update it after so many years of neglect. I report bugs as I find them too because I know I'm not the only one it's happening to. As you rightly state "I couldn't find anything better", is, rightly, true. Couldn't agree more.

(In reply to Ness Blackbird from comment #18)
> (In reply to Richard Leger from comment #13)
> > According to user stories, repair of folder does not fix the issue.
> > The current workaround that works is to turn off message synchronisation (disable download for offline use).
> 
> You say that, but my strong impression (from looking for a solution) is that this is a common problem, and this workaround isn't well-known. I really think it drives a lot of people off of Thunderbird.
> 
> I stopped using TB for a while, but I couldn't find anything better, so I went back for yet another round of looking for workarounds and finally figured out what to do -- but not before I moved a couple hundred thousand emails onto my local drive, only to find that they are no longer searchable, and so might as well have been deleted :(

Ness,

A user and Moz volunteer here. I don't consider it a common problem as I, using TB 94 beta, only have just begun seeing it beginning with that version. I never saw it when I was on 91 but it isn't to say it isn't happening or hasn't been introduced in a recent 91.x version as a bug or coding mistake. I myself have 20-25+ years of emails totaling 110GB (that came from back in the Eudora days of the 90s). If you have many hundreds of thousands of emails as I myself do, re-indexing that all over again after coming back from another client, I would surmise, would take a long, long time.

If you didn't know, TB has seen a resuscitation after having been on life support with effectively zero development since mid-2012. Google "thunderbird life support", there's a CNET article about it. It's only just been in the past couple years that >active< development re-started again and some new blood (in the form of a couple new developer hires, if my memory serves me correctly) was injected into TB. There is a Mount Everest's worth of catching up to do from 2012 to present. Also, There was also a HUGE amount of layoffs that happen at Mozilla in 2020 which further slowed TB development.

For some, the development or bug fixing pace may seem glacial. To a large degree, there is a historical reason for that. As a user, I've seen a lot of break/fix happening in the past couple years. But I've seen a HUGE improvement in TB performance aswell. For a while, TB felt like a car that was left in the driveway under a tarp and finally got started 10 years later. Whatever code was left to rot between 2012 and present is getting fixed/updated. Slowly. It'll take a lot of massaging. I understand that fully. I have ZERO expectations of any immediacy of bug fixing for a product for which I pay $0.

I am not here to apologize for things that get broken along the way but I am thankful to Mozilla for keeping TB going and being motivated to update it after so many years of neglect. I report bugs as I find them too because I know I'm not the only one it's happening to. As you rightly state "I couldn't find anything better", is, rightly, true. Couldn't agree more.

(In reply to Ness Blackbird from comment #18)
> (In reply to Richard Leger from comment #13)
> > According to user stories, repair of folder does not fix the issue.
> > The current workaround that works is to turn off message synchronisation (disable download for offline use).
> 
> You say that, but my strong impression (from looking for a solution) is that this is a common problem, and this workaround isn't well-known. I really think it drives a lot of people off of Thunderbird.
> 
> I stopped using TB for a while, but I couldn't find anything better, so I went back for yet another round of looking for workarounds and finally figured out what to do -- but not before I moved a couple hundred thousand emails onto my local drive, only to find that they are no longer searchable, and so might as well have been deleted :(

Ness,

A user and Moz volunteer here. I don't consider it a common problem as I, using TB 94 beta, only have just begun seeing it beginning with that version. I never saw it when I was on 91 but it isn't to say it isn't happening or hasn't been introduced in a recent 91.x version as a bug or coding mistake. I myself have 20-25+ years of emails totaling 110GB (that came from back in the Eudora days of the 90s). If you have many hundreds of thousands of emails as I myself do, re-indexing that all over again after coming back from another client, I would surmise, would take a long, long time.

If you didn't know, TB has seen a resuscitation after having been on life support with effectively zero development since mid-2012. Google "thunderbird life support", there's a CNET article about it. It's only just been in the past couple years that >active< development re-started again and some new blood (in the form of a couple new developer hires, if my memory serves me correctly) was injected into TB. There is a Mount Everest's worth of catching up to do from 2012 to present. Also, There was also a HUGE amount of layoffs that happen at Mozilla in 2020 which further slowed TB development.

For some, the development or bug fixing pace may seem glacial. To a large degree, there is a historical reason for that. As a user, I've seen a lot of break/fix happening in the past couple years. But I've seen a HUGE improvement in TB performance as well. For a while, TB felt like a car that was left in the driveway under a tarp and finally got started 10 years later. Whatever code was left to rot between 2012 and present is getting fixed/updated. Slowly. It'll take a lot of massaging. I understand that fully. I have ZERO expectations of any immediacy of bug fixing for a product for which I pay $0.

I am not here to apologize for things that get broken along the way but I am thankful to Mozilla for keeping TB going and being motivated to update it after so many years of neglect. I report bugs as I find them too because I know I'm not the only one it's happening to. As you rightly state "I couldn't find anything better", is, rightly, true. Couldn't agree more.