119516 - lose messages in mail folders whose name contain square brackets

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 94512

(MailNews Core :: Filters, defect)

Description

[Sven Sandberg]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-GB; rv:0.9.4)
Gecko/20011128 Netscape6/6.2.1
BuildID:    6

I had two folders, [AL] and [AD], and some other folders which did not contain
square brackets. I had filters sorting some messages into these folders. First
time I started netscape's mail program, I downloaded my messages (about 500 to
1000 in each of the folders). Everything was fine. Next time I started the
program, most of my messages were gone. There were about 2-3 messages in the
folders, but I think I downloaded these in the same session, so all old messages
were gone. From now on my story is messy because I don't remember the exact
order in which things happened, but I maybe it contains some useful information
nevertheless. I tried to delete the mailboxes from the program and I also tried
to delete the .msf files for the mailboxes. At some point the program created
two new folders, with names which looked like 32 bit hexadecimal numbers. They
worked like "bookmarks" to [AL] and [AD], so any messages in [AL] and [AD] also
appeared in the new hexadecimal folders. Also, I couldn't delete the hexadecimal
folders (sometimes they reappeared when I restarted netscape, sometimes it said
something like "can't move folder because it already exists on the target"). At
all times, the sizes of the mail files on disk indicated that they really
contained all messages (so the mail program was merely hiding them from me).

The problem went away when I uninstalled, then reinstalled netscape, and did not
use square brackets in folder names.

Reproducible: Didn't try

You only asked for the number appearing in the title bar, which is 6 (preceded
by "Netscape"), but you probably also want to know the following (cut and pasted
from the two first lines of the page appearing when selecting "About Netscape 6"
in the Help menu of navigator).

Netscape 6.2.1
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-GB; rv:0.9.4) Gecko/20011128
Netscape6/6.2.1

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

You were using Netscape mail filters to filter the mail? Are you using POP3 or
IMAP? I can't really tell from you description.

Comment 2

[Håkan Waara]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 94512 ***

Comment 3

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

verified dup...

from the bug report:

'The problem went away when I uninstalled, then reinstalled netscape, and did not
use square brackets in folder names.'