264457 - cannot delete folders under Local Folders that are not default names in POP

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[J. da Cunha]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910

I am using secure POP with WinXP. I don't understand the action that I see. I am
trying to create and delete folders under Local Folders. I create a folder by
right clicking Local Folders and go down through the tree under Create as a
subfolder etc. When I specify a duplicate folder name, strange results sometimes
happen. It seems to give a correct error message, but changing the folder name
does not remove the previous incorrect name. The result is a corrupted (?)
folder which then cannot be deleted. Clicking on the corrupted folder produces
the hourglass pointer which never goes away. I can add folders under the
corrupted one and they are either invisible except in the Create as a subfolder
etc. tree and cannot be deleted or are visible and cannot be deleted. The
invisible folders show up as duplicate folder names when trying to create a new
folder. Any workarounds to clean this up?  

Reproducible: Couldn't Reproduce
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.



Expected Results:  
Should be able to delete folder even/especially if corrupted.

I would say that this is a hallucination except that it sits here staring me in
the face. Help!

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Are there any special characters in the folder names -- punctuation or non-ASCII 
letters?

Comment 2

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

J. da Cunha, if "Yes" is your answer to Mike's question, see Bug 264071.

Comment 3

[J. da Cunha]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Are there any special characters in the folder names -- punctuation or non-ASCII 
> letters?

The only special characters that I know were used are space character, -
character and / character. Two of the files can be renamed using these
characters or other alphanumeric characters. They still cannot be deleted. No
error message is created when trying to delete, there is just no action. The
third folder is named "Oct04-2". This folder cannot be renamed. The error
message is: "The folder could not be renamed. Perhaps the folder is being
reparsed, etc." This folder cannot be deleted either. I can add and delete
folders under Oct04-2 without trouble. 

Comment 4

[J. da Cunha]

(In reply to comment #2)
> J. da Cunha, if "Yes" is your answer to Mike's question, see Bug 264071.

I read through this bug report and it sounds like it could be related. I tried
using some of the characters that I thought might be troublesome ( space, -, /).
They seemed to work OK. See previous comment responding to Mike.

Workaround: I was able to remove the files by going into the folder from My
Computer with Mozilla closed. Several previous folders that show as deleted in
Mozilla were left in the directory. The folders that could not be deleted seemed
to have dummy names like: 3dba7rn etc. with and without a file extension (.sbd). 
Also, after the folder is cleared out in My Computer, if I create a folder with
the same name as the one removed in My Computer, it cannot be deleted. Looking
in the directory using My Computer shows the folder exists in the directory.
I need to move on from this. My next step is to remove Mozilla and reinstall.
While this is drastic, I think I need to start from scratch. Thanks for your help.

Comment 5

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Well, so far, it seems you are lucky -- see bug 264467, which is pretty easily 
reproducible.
Bug 120559 and bug 140212 are old bugs about the slash in the folder name, altho 
the latter has seen some activity recently.  See also bug 246346 (semicolon).

I can't find any existing bugs about folder names with a dash, nor can I 
reproduce the problem.  Was that the original name of the folder, or was it 
renamed from something else?

A little more information, please, about the folders you cannot delete.
Are they "special" folders (with a specific icon) like Inbox, Junk, Trash, etc?
Do their current names (or did any earlier name) have a special character, in 
particular a colon, semicolon or slash?

Regarding the issue of corruption: have you tried deleting the .MSF files (in 
the Local Folders subdirectory) that correspond to the folders you have created? 
Mozilla will rebuild those files on startup, and that might solve the problem of 
corruption, if any exists.

(In reply to comment #4)
> The folders that could not be deleted seemed
> to have dummy names like: 3dba7rn etc.
> with and without a file extension (.sbd). 

<foldername>.sbd is a directory, which contains the subfolders of the folder.
Without a file extension, the file <foldername> is a single file containing all 
the mail in the folder itself (excluding subfolders).

Those dummy names are used in particular when a slash is in the folder name, 
maybe for some other characters as well.


> My next step is to remove Mozilla and reinstall.
> While this is drastic, I think I need to start from scratch.

Not only drastic, it's unnecessary.  It's highly unlikely your problem result 
from program corruption; there are plenty of known issue with folder names that 
could result in this sort of symptom.

Comment 6

[J. da Cunha]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Well, so far, it seems you are lucky -- see bug 264467, which is pretty easily 
> reproducible.
> Bug 120559 and bug 140212 are old bugs about the slash in the folder name, altho 
> the latter has seen some activity recently.  See also bug 246346 (semicolon).
> 
> I can't find any existing bugs about folder names with a dash, nor can I 
> reproduce the problem.  Was that the original name of the folder, or was it 
> renamed from something else?
**  The original name of the subfolder was and is Oct04-2. It was not renamed
from something else. The folder above this one in the tree was originally named
Outlook Folder. When I imported my Outlook mail, Mozilla created a new folder
called Outlook Mail. It was then impossible to remove the two "Outlook "
folders. I could rename them but not delete them. I could also delete the
imported stuff under the original Outlook Mail, but not the top level folder. 

> 
> A little more information, please, about the folders you cannot delete.
> Are they "special" folders (with a specific icon) like Inbox, Junk, Trash, etc?
> Do their current names (or did any earlier name) have a special character, in 
> particular a colon, semicolon or slash?
  **  In answer to your first question directly above: no. There were no special
folder names like Inbox, etc. To answer your second question: in the imported
stuff from Outlook, there was a folder named Vendors/Reps. The import stopped
when it got to that name and indicated it was not a legal name. I terminated the
import to fix the name. After fixing the name in Outlook, I tried to delete the
stuff that had already been imported. That's when I had the problem. 
> 
> Regarding the issue of corruption: have you tried deleting the .MSF files (in 
> the Local Folders subdirectory) that correspond to the folders you have created? 
> Mozilla will rebuild those files on startup, and that might solve the problem of 
> corruption, if any exists.
  **  I was able to remove these files (.msf) using Windows Explorer (My
Computer). When restarting Mozilla, the files were gone from the folder list
under Local Folders. As an experiment, I tried to create a folder under Local
Folders with a name I had used before. I was able to create the folder, but
couldn't delete it without going into My Computer. The program seemed to
remember the folder names. 

> 
> (In reply to comment #4)
> > The folders that could not be deleted seemed
> > to have dummy names like: 3dba7rn etc.
> > with and without a file extension (.sbd). 
> 
> <foldername>.sbd is a directory, which contains the subfolders of the folder.
> Without a file extension, the file <foldername> is a single file containing all 
> the mail in the folder itself (excluding subfolders).
> 
> Those dummy names are used in particular when a slash is in the folder name, 
> maybe for some other characters as well.
> 
> 
> > My next step is to remove Mozilla and reinstall.
> > While this is drastic, I think I need to start from scratch.
> 
> Not only drastic, it's unnecessary.  It's highly unlikely your problem result 
> from program corruption; there are plenty of known issue with folder names that 
> could result in this sort of symptom.
  **  I obtained very interesting results after reinstalling. I went back a rev
and installed 1.7.2. It seemed to install correctly. The Local Folders tree was
clean. As an experiment, I created a folder with a name I had used before. It
created OK. I tried to delete it but could not. I then removed version 1.7.2 and
reinstalled 1.7.3. Local Folders started out clean. I repeated the same
experiment as above with the same result. I then removed 1.7.3 again. I made
sure that Mozilla was not in Program Files. I also went into Documents and
Settings/<user>/Application Data and removed the Mozilla directory. I then
reinstalled 1.7.3. I imported my address book and mail from Outlook without
incident. I then repeated the experiment above. It worked correctly. I was able
to create and delete the folder without incident. Is it possible that something
gets written to the Application Data directories that causes the problem to
persist after reinstallation? I have tried to give you as much information as I
can remember, whether it seems relevant or not. I hope it is helpful in
resolving this problem. I seem to be running correctly now. I do like Mozilla. 
Cheers,  J. da Cunha 

Comment 7

[J. da Cunha]

After reading Bug 264467, the symptoms are very similar except for the crash. I
did not crash. The rest of Mozilla and MailNews seemed to work OK.  Cheers, J.
da Cunha

Comment 8

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
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Comment 9

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.